Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE DESKTOP 10 SP1 - KDE 14-05-2007, Manual, Page: 96 / 354

A master document is a Writer document that serves as a container for multiple Writer
files. You can maintain chapters or other subdocuments as individual files collected in
the master document. Master documents are also useful if multiple people are working
on a document. You can separate each person’s portion of the document into subdocu-
ments collected in a master document, allowing multiple writers to work on their sub-
documents at the same time without fear of overwriting other people’s work.
NOTE
If you are coming to OpenOffice.org from Microsoft Word, you might be ner-
vous about using master documents because the master document feature in
Word has a reputation for corrupting documents. This problem does not exist
in OpenOffice.org Writer, so you can safely use master documents to manage
your projects.
To create a master document:
1
Click New Master Document.
or
Open an existing document and click File Send Create Master Document.
2 Insert subdocuments.
3 Click File Save.
The OpenOffice.org help files contain more complete information about working with
master documents. Look for the topic entitled “Using Master Documents and Subdoc-
uments.”
TIP
The styles from all of your subdocuments are imported into the master docu-
ment. To ensure that formatting is consistent throughout your master document,
you should use the same template for each subdocument. Doing so is not
mandatory; however, if subdocuments are formatted differently, you might
need to do some reformatting to successfully bring subdocuments into the
master document without creating inconsistencies. For example, if two docu-
ments imported into your master document include different styles with the
84 KDE User Guide