Hi Nick,
Honestly, I started a reply to your previous post, but your post was too
long, my reply was too complicated and I got confused, so didn't finish
it. Also, it was not entirely clear that your questions continued beyond
Shauna's previous reply. Sorry. Also, a lot of this advice is already
sorta shared here, which I compiled based on the links that were most
helpful when I was writing my thesis:
http://daiya.mvps.org/bookword.htm
Anyhow, an attempt:
Layout and page numbering for (1) and (2) is not relevant until you
combine all the chapters, so worry about that later. To prepare to allow
the TOC and TOFigures/Tables to be created, be sure to use proper
headings styles and the Insert | Caption feature in the body of the
thesis. Also set up whatever other styles you may use--block
quotations, for instance.
If you are using Word's endnote feature, you may need some tricks, post
back about that. Perhaps try to make each post a single question? But
keep it all under the same thread.
I think that I will make a template only for (3). But the "body" will
actually be composed of several chapters (= several files), and I plan to
put them together at the final stage, incl. references.
Would you suggest I write all these things in separate files and put them
together at the very end in one large file or in a Master Document?
DO NOT USE A MASTER DOCUMENT. IT MAY CORRUPT YOUR FILES. IT IS NOT WORTH
THE RISK.
Whether you write each chapter in different files or in the same file is
up to you. You will need to combine it at some point to autogenerate
the TOC, list of figures, and to insert cross-references. As long as
all the chapter files are based on the same template, this will not be
so difficult.
I will three templates. When I merge the various files, based on either of
the templates, on what template-basis do I do this?
Huh? I don't understand the question. You should only have one
template, for the chapters in the body of the thesis. That's your main
template. Write your chapters. Use Insert | File into a new clean doc to
get the chapters combined, then generate the TOC and TOF, etc. Then
type the title page, abstract, and signature page. Then mess with
putting in section breaks in the necessary places, and setting where
page numbers show and don't show, etc.
Since the final printed version might be a little different from the
composing version, it might be useful to duplicate your main template
under a different name, combine the chapters into a doc based on that
duplicate, and do some tweaks. Not a big deal.
Sounded like you figured out the template-editing problem, so I deleted
all that bit. However, a note:
Making changes to the template will sorta update your existing
documents--you can force the styles to show the new changes, but Layout
or Text changes like adding a page number will not propagate to the
documents based on the template. When writing my dissertation, I
usually just changed the template, created a new blank doc based on the
updated template, and used Insert | File to get the chapter docs into
the new format, creating a new chapter file rather than trying to update
the old one. This required less thinking and created a backup of my
chapter documents.
Daiya