Master DocumentFrank Loehmann2009-07-15T18:47:19

Personally I am not a big fan of master documents. This has been developed to have something like Word. Word needed this to handle mass text. Writer has no problem with large documents! So why use it if only one person is writing the document?

Furthermore cross referencing over sub documents borders does not work and the master document does not transfer/share the (page/paragraph etc.) styles with the sub documents. Thus layout and formatting can only be controlled in the master document, but that cannot be edited...

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Thanks to the Master Document feature in OpenOffice Writer, a large document can be written chapter by chapter and, towards the end, joined into a big document. A Master Document incorporates each chapter of a book as an individual OpenOffice Writer file. Using a Master Document is usually not necessary as OpenOffice Writer is stable and powerful enough to manage large documents. A Master Document is more appropriate when a document has several authors, or where individual chapters are created separately and then must be incorporated into a complete work. Benefits of using a Master Document include:

• When you print a master document, the contents of all subdocuments, indexes, and any text that you entered are printed.

• You can create a table of contents and index in the master document for all of the subdocuments.

For consistency, all documents in a Master Document should use the same template. Please note that the Master Document does not allow cross references beyond a subdocument. The master document also does not transfer or share the page, paragraph, etc, styles with the subdocuembts. Thus layout and formatting can only be controlled in the master document. If the document is not beeing edited by multiple authors you may want to reconsider the use of the Master Document.