Special Edition Using® Microsoft® Office Word 2003

The Advantages of Master Documents

A master document is a document that provides a gathering place for multiple smaller documents—called subdocuments. Each of these subdocuments can be developed and edited separately, by separate users on separate computers. All of these subdocuments can be controlled centrally, through the master document. Subdocuments can be divided and combined as needed by the project's participants.

Master documents make it possible for many people to work on parts of a document while one person still controls the entire document.

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 ...