Using a Master Document

If you create reports in Word which include more than one Tedds calculation you could dramatically increase your productivity by learning how to use Word’s Master Documents feature. A Master Document allows you to collate the output from any number of documents into a single final report. This is much more efficient to manage than a single document with many calculations and hundreds of pages because sub documents which include only a few calculations are much quicker for Tedds to calculate as well as Word to repaginate, spell check etc. You can include a Table of Contents in the Master Document which will show the content in the sub documents and continuous page numbering will be managed automatically.

The instructions below will give you a basic overview on how to create a master document, for more detailed information please refer to Microsoft Office help.

1. Create and save your various documents in the normal way. In the following instructions these will be called ‘sub documents’. They do not need to be saved in the same folder, in fact they could be on different PCs, servers or even in a cloud storage location such as DropBox. 
2. Open a new document, which will be used as your ‘master document’
3. Select Outline from the Views group on the View ribbon:
   Image

   
4. Then select Show Document followed by Insert:
   Image

   
5. Browse and select your first sub document
6. If your sub document has a different template than the master document you will be informed that ‘The master document template will be used’. This may affect the way the document looks – header layout etc. We recommend that you use the same template for your master and sub documents whenever possible.
7. Click No to All if you are prompted to rename Paragraph Styles in the sub document:
   Image

   
8. An outline view of your sub document will be displayed:
   Image

   
9. Repeat for each subsequent sub document
10. Close the Outline View

Your master document should now show the content of all the sub documents and you can now use features such as Table of Contents, Navigation Pane and Cover Page to complete your report. If any of your sub documents are amended the changes will be automatically shown in the master document, you just need to ensure that your table of contents is updated.

Other Master Document commands

• Collapse Subdocuments – this will show the path to your sub document rather than the actual content. 
• Expand Subdocuments – this will show the actual content of sub document rather than the path to it.  You will need to Expand Documents in order to Insert sub documents
• Lock Document -  choose this option only if you don’t want the master document to be updated when the sub document changes
• Unlink – delete the link to the subdocument and copy the content to the master document.