Special Edition Using Microsoft® Word 2000

The Advantages of Master Documents

Often, you need a way to edit parts of a document—while still staying in control of the whole document. Master documents give you that flexibility. A master document is, in essence, a gathering place for multiple smaller documents—called subdocuments—each of which can be developed and edited separately, by separate users on separate computers.

After you've created a master document, you can reopen it any time you want, displaying all the subdocuments together. This gives you a quick, efficient way to see how all the components of your document relate to each other, even if individual subdocuments have been heavily edited by your colleagues since you viewed them last. You can use Word's navigation tools as if ...