See here, for one:
Creating a Table of Contents Spanning Multiple Documents
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/P...cle.asp?ID=148

IncludeText Fields might be an option, though this is a simplistic intro to
them:
http://daiya.mvps.org/includetext.htm

Steve Hudson [Word Heretic] on how to make Master Documents work safely:
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ma...dhomepage.html

More on why MDs are unreliable:

Why Master Documents corrupt:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Genera...ocsCorrupt.htm

How to recover a Master Document:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Genera...MasterDocs.htm

You are not wrong to worry about putting all eggs in one basket, but the
answer to that is backup frequently--turn on the Make BackUp option as Anne
said, but also backup frequently yourself.

I am not sure what difference frames may make to any of these options.
Theoretically, none, I think.


On 6/21/05 11:49 AM, "Jeff" wrote:

Hi (using Word 2002 in XP).

I am writing a book that has many chapters. It is a complex book, so I'm
writing a little in one chapter and a little in another at various times,
adding ideas as they come along. At present each chapter is in a separate
file, but that has created a great many separate files and I am looking for
a way to coordinate them. I therefore thought of the Master document as a
tool to do this. I used to use the Master document when I was writing in
WordPerfect 5.1 and it worked very well for me. But I heard that master
documents have problems and a great risk of corruption in Word. Is that
true? What kind of problems occur with Master documents. Can they be
avoided?

Any suggestions as to how to maintain a "big picture" of all the chapters in
this manuscript? I could of course put them all in one huge file with the
heading chapters creating a master list in the TOC - and I'm considering
doing that - but the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket that might
get corrupted somehow bothers me. Am I wrong to worry about that?

This manuscript has a lot of illustrations (if that makes a difference in
the responses) and I use frames to position them within the document.

Thanks for any suggestions and ideas.

--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/