What is good alternative to using Master Documents?

[JDPeoples]

I have read the MVPs' warnings about the dangers of master documents. Can
anyone recommend a good alternative to master documents? I have 8
presentation documents that are comprised of multiple "recommendations." Some
of the recommendations are the same across all 8 presentation documents and
other recommendations may differ by a word or two depending on the audience
(banks or credit unions). My original plan was to create subdocuments out of
the recommendations and use the appropriate subdocuments to comprise each
presentation master document. Now I'm concerned about corruption issues with
master documents that may render the whole thing a big mess. My tests using
Master Documents have not gone well.

Alternatively, I've also wondered if there is a way to use formulas and the
mail merge feature to allow me to create If/Then fields so that I could have
one presentation file and just update the audience-specific fields by
choosing the appropriate code for an audience. For example, if my audience
was banks, then a field would read "customer" and if the audience was credit
unions, the field would read "member." This way, I could maintain just one
document instead of 8. I greatly appreciate any suggestions. I am using MS
Word 2002 SP3 and Office XP.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

See http://www.addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm for information on
the Master Document feature and workarounds. See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm for more
information on what goes wrong, and
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm for ideas on how
to salvage what you can. See
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/masterdocs.doc for
Steve Hudson's instructions if you are willing to follow them very
carefully.

Otherwise, you might look into Custom Document properties and the
DocProperty field. For variations on how you can set one or two properties
and vary all sorts of other words depending on what they are, try
downloading my gender toolbar template from
http://addbalance.com/word/download.htm.

--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[JDPeoples]

Charles,
Thank you very much for your reply. I think that Custom Document Properties
may be the answer I need. I will respond again once I've had a chance to test
it further.

Thank you again for your time and consideration.
Jennifer Peoples