I want to create a document of about 250 pages in 60 sections (a diary from
the 1860s), with an index and extensive footnotes.

Is a Master Document appropriate for this task?

If I start with the Master Document in outline form and then create new
subdocuments, how great is the danger of corruption?

I'm an experienced user of Word 2003.

A single Word document can easily contain 250 pages. The term
"section" has a special meaning in Word that is probably
different than what you're thinking, and hopefully it won't be
necessary for you to insert 60 section breaks in your Word
document.

The Master Document feature in Word is unstable for most users. See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Genera...ocsCorrupt.htm
and http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/Genera...MasterDocs.htm
for more information.

If you must use the Master document feature, then follow the
advice at
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ma...dhomepage.html
.. And make daily (or more frequent) backups of your work just in
case.

Caroline's Oma wrote:

I want to create a document of about 250 pages in 60 sections (a diary from
the 1860s), with an index and extensive footnotes.

Is a Master Document appropriate for this task?

If I start with the Master Document in outline form and then create new
subdocuments, how great is the danger of corruption?

I'm an experienced user of Word 2003.