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Document Management in Word

Anonymous
2019-07-13T14:51:34+00:00

My wife is creating a document for her genealogy and it is massive in size with much verbiage and many pictures.  Because the document is large she is always taking cutting it into new word files and then continues working.  The of course as she adds more info she needs to then cut the files in 2 more files and so on.

What is the maximum size of a word document?

Is there a better way to manage the document or a better app to do the same thing?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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  1. DaveM121 872.1K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2019-07-13T15:28:32+00:00

    Hi Neil13764

    People who create large books with many graphics . . etc.use either QuarkXpress or InDesign

    Both of those are prohibitively expensive, I have both and believe me they cost so they will be out of the question . ..

    The reason those applications are used by the professionals is layout is alot easier and also the graphics are not actually stored in the document, rather, the graphics are stored in a separate folder

    So say you have an image in a footer or header, that image will appear on every page, in work that could be 1000 of those images, making for a huge file, on those other applications,all there exists is a reference to the image file and if you were to update that image in a photo editing suite, the 1000 images in the document instantly change . . .

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  1. Charles Kenyon 166.8K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2019-07-13T15:38:50+00:00

    Dave is correct.

    Your wife could use the IncludePicture field to link pictures. This is somewhat tricky in that you are going to want the pictures to be in the same folder as the original document. If the document is moved to a new folder the links may have to be re-established.

    She may want to review Paul Edstein's work on relative links.

    Word Fields and Relative Paths to External Files

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  2. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-07-14T04:04:24+00:00

    Don't even think about using the Master Document\Sub Document facility.

    See the article "Why Master Documents corrupt” at:

    http://wordmvp.com/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm

    See the article "How to recover a Master Document” at:

    http://wordmvp.com/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm

    As it is possible to create a Table of Contents for multiple documents, there is really no need to combine all of the parts into one document.

    To see how to create such a Table of Contents, see Section 4 on the following page of the late Shauna Kelly's website:

    https://shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/tableofcontents.html

    If you want to finally publish the document in one file, I would use the free PrimoPDF printer to create a pdf file.  Use it to "print" each part of the document in the required sequence, using the same file name for the second and subsequent parts as you used for the first part and when asked if you want to overwrite, or append, select the append option.

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  3. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2019-07-14T02:40:09+00:00

    The operating parameter limits are given in the following article

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/211489/operating-parameter-limitations-and-specifications-in-word

    The best advice to give your wife is to create a revolving series of backups so that she will never lose more than a day's work

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  4. DaveM121 872.1K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2019-07-13T14:55:22+00:00

    Hi Neil13764

    Honestly, what your wife is doing is the best way to ensure against data loss in a large word document . ..

    While the theoretical limit to a Word document is huge and your wife will never reach that size, it is well known for a Word document to corrupt and all data to be lost in large Word documents

    So, always have a copy of the most recent document and splitting very large Word documents into smaller documents is the best way to ensure against data loss . . .

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