Word 2007 for Writers: Part 3 – Master Documents and Outlines
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A book can be an unwieldy thing to write, especially on older (read: slower) hardware, and even more especially if you have illustrations, charts, and other graphic material in your file. As the document gets bigger, it gets slower and slower to open the document, to find your place, and to scroll back and forth to see what you’ve done.
Fortunately, Word has long had a little-used feature that allows you to work with separate “chunks” of content and compile them into a single final document. It’s called a “master document” and is a pretty straight-forward but powerful tool. Simply put, a master document is a single document that pulls content in from several other documents, like individual chapters.
In the past, people have had some trouble with master documents, and it’s easy to see why: you’re asking Word to put together documents with different preferences, formatting options, and other settings, and Word has to make some difficult choices. If you’re using consistent style sets across your documents, though, much of Word’s work is done for it. And since Word 2007 makes styles so much easier to work with, many of the problems users of previous editions of Word had should be alleviated.
Creating a Master Document in Word 2007
While you can make a master document at any point in the writing process, it’s best to start your project intending to use a master document. Create a single folder for your document, and save all the pieces into it. You’ll be telling the master document where to look on your hard drive for the pieces it needs to put together, and if you decide to move them halfway through the project, you’ll confuse your master document.
Once you’ve created your project folder, open Word and create a master document. You can start from scratch or use an existing document — but since you’ve planned out your project in advance (right?), I’m going to assume you’re starting from scratch. Go to the “View” tab and select “Outline view”. The ribbon bar will change, giving you options for master documents. Click “Show Document” — the menu will change again, opening the options for master documents.
From there, you can “Create” new sub-documents, or “Insert” existing documents as sub-documents. Essentially, you’re outlining your project, with each big section — prefaces, introductions, chapters, chapter sub-sections, even big chunks of text — going into a separate document.
Next to the grey circle/minus sign icon, type a section heading — let’s say, a chapter title. Hit “Return”. Type another section heading. Hit “return”. And so on, fleshing out your outline. You can use the tab key to indent levels that will become sub-section headings and sub-sub-section headings.
Place your cursor in any heading (or sub- or sub-sub-heading) and hit the “Create” button and the heading will become an editable space. Any text you type next to the bullet point will be added to the sub-document. Double-clicking on the little “text” icon next to the header will open the sub-document, which you can edit independently. When you save the new document (you’ll be given a normal “Save” dialogue — save it into your project folder) the master document will be updated with the changes you made to the sub-document.
Placing your cursor on a heading and click the “Insert” button will allow you to select any document and insert it into your master document. I suggest copying any already-existing documents into your project folder first, so there’s no confusion about what files to edit or where everything is.
When you hit “Close Outline View”, you’ll return to the normal page layout and see your document looking like any other document.
Outlining a Document in Word 2007
You can also use the “Outline” view to create an outline of any Word document, as long as you’re using styles. Word will convert any Heading 1, Heading 2, etc. styles into appropriate level headings, and stick the paragraphs under them into the outline as separate bullet points. You can, of course, make changes, add sections, and so on from the “Outline” view.
You can convert your document into a master document, but you have to be careful of the text. Selecting a heading and all of the text under it, then hit “Create”. Or select a heading, hit “Create”, and drag and drop the text into the box around the new sub-document entry.
The “Outline” view can be a powerful tool, but it’s incredibly under-used. That’s understandable, since it is not entirely intuitive — it doesn’t work quite like you’d expect an outliner to work (and like most outlining programs work) and it’s not exactly pretty. Still, once you get a hang of it, there’s a lot to do with it, especially if you’re comfortable with master documents.
Posts in "Word 2007" series- Word 2007 for Writers: Part 1 – Introduction
- Word 2007 for Writers: Part 2 – Using Styles
- Word 2007 for Writers: Part 3 – Master Documents and Outlines
- Word 2007 for Writers: Part 4 – Fun with Sections
- Word 2007 for Writers: Part 5 – Proofreading and Editing Tricks
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August 9th, 2008 at 5:34 am
[…] Word 2007 for Writers: Part 3 - Master Documents and Outlines […]
February 25th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Very useful - much better than Microsoft’s own Web site!
May 21st, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Hi Dustin,
Have you ran into all the problems people report with Master Documents in Word? See links. I have plenty of problems with multi-level outline numbering and when I try to combine that with Master documents is gets worse.
Pete
Not sure if this link will come through…
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/wizard.mspx?&query=word+master+documents&lang=en&cr=US&guid=&sloc=en-us&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement&p=1&tid=fe0fbeb2-66e8-42dd-83fc-a048a2da3715
Some text from it:
“
The master document feature has been broken in *every* version of Word
since the feature was first introduced. In short, using the feature almost
inevitably results in all or part of the document becoming hopelessly
corrupted. Many could benefit from a trustworthy master document feature. My
reading is that the OP needs the feature and wishes for a version of Word in
which it works reliably.
Because of the new file format, I had high hopes for master documents in
Word 2007. Unfortunately, the last time I checked (SP1), the feature was
still broken (i.e., still spontaneously corrupting documents). I have not
ventured into master documents in Word 2007 SP2, but I’ve read nothing that
suggests it was one of the fixes.
For more on why master documents should be avoided by people who value their
documents, see:
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/general/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm
John McGhie also points to an article describing a “safe” way to use master documents. IMO, the rules that need to be followed to avoid corruption are very difficult to enforce when working with a group of authors, and not all that easy to follow when working alone. In any case, master documents need to be made unbreakable and robust before they can be used with reliability and confidence.
“
May 26th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I’m showing my age here, but I remember when master documents DID work, and it was in Word 5.0. Yes, the DOS version of Word! This was back before some #$!$%$%$^ at Microsoft decided to do away with style sheets and go to the mess we know today as “templates.” Style sheets worked because they were a simple but powerful tagging system for formatting content. Back then, master / sub documents were even portable, because, if the master and subs were all in a single folder, the master didn’t include path information in the sub doc references. The mess Microsoft has made of what should be a simple referencing paradigm is outrageous. Word has gone backward with nearing every release since then in terms of its usefulness for professional writers.
July 13th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Thanks for the effort, but you discuss functionality without detailing the theory. Why would I outline sections instead of complete documents? Give examples. This still requires trial and error on the part of the reader.
You no doubt understand the subject you’re discussing, but you don’t thoroughly explain the details a new user will need.
July 13th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Dan: I don’t use Master Documents regularly, but here’s one case where they are useful — many publishers want chapters as separate documents, but single documents are easier for many writers to work with. Or for people who prefer to work in small chunks — maybe you are writing different sections on different computers — Master Documents provides a way to meld them together into a final product. (Same for working with other authors.)
I’ve actually found a plugin that I’m testing that offers much more flexibility than Master Documents but does kind of the same thing, which I’ll be posting about soon, once I’ve determined that it works well. But both this new plugin and Master Documents provide a way to outline a large document and drill down into specific parts to work on at any given moment.
Like most of what I write about here, this boils down to individual style and comfort levels — this is far and away the most popular post on the site (!!!!) so people must have some need to use Master Documents or they wouldn’t be searching for it. I don’t really work that way, but that’s more because I write mostly short pieces than because I’m just not Master Documents material…
August 6th, 2010 at 11:33 am
I work with Caltrans Specs — we have a compiler that assembles various applicable sections into one document. Of course the source docs from Caltrans were written/edited by multiple people, many of whom have no idea how to use tab settings, let alone styles, but use them anyway. Can you see the potential for disaster? Yes, every time anyone who creates Specs for state, county or local construction jobs, we spends countless hours reformatting the EXACT SAME ISSUES, EVERY SINGLE TIME - but our bosses don’t understand what OUR problem is (I know a few admins who have dealt with Plans & Specs and they laugh hysterically-on the verge of lost sanity — over the whole thing). Besides going with Documentum, an over-priced mediocre solution - anyone out there have any ideas?