atw: Re: Office 2007 - Master documents - Faustian evil but useable...

Warren Lewington: On Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:51:13 +1100,  you wrote:
> Sorry Pete, have I left something out there?
>
> I made dozens of the damn thing nearly 18 months ago now. The reply was
> horribly rushed. The basics I put in certainly worked for me. The important
> thing was to not move the documents from the source area. That was a no
> brainer, preferably leaving them on a network.
>
> In the end for me, I produced pdfs from them and released them to clients.
> If the client lost the manuals the policy was to reproduce a new one of the
> latest version. Always keep back-ups btw...
>

Only a matter of emphasis.  

Just trying to impress on anyone who hasn't seen almost every file in their
Master mode collection corrupted beyond repair when they had to put about 200 
of them
together that trouble can and will strike at different stages in the process
and you may not always detect it... at least in the last incarnation of 
Word Master mode I had to deal with.   

At the time I recall having sequentially numbered zip files set aside every 
time I ventured to 
do anything to the master collection.    They were needed. 

What worked for me eventually was to convert to rtf and patch separate rtf files
together into one long file....then  open the whole thing and print 
immediately.   
while it still hadn't realised it was a Word file :-)        ( Sometimes 
Defence 
production doc specs were nearly as  silly as some of the other specs 
involved.) 

I did wonder if any recipient of the master file ever bothered to open it after 
receipt. 
Somehow doubt it. 

But guess it was a salutory lesson.   Even with FrameMaker, I make backups as 
well
as use CVS storage these days.     Hmm maybe that's a better answer for the Word
problem, too.... easier to pick the corruption point and replace with the 
earlier version.

--Peter M 




 



      

 


**************************************************
To post a message to austechwriter, send the message to 
austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To subscribe to austechwriter, send a message to 
austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject field.

To unsubscribe, send a message to austechwriter-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 
"unsubscribe" in the Subject field.

To search the austechwriter archives, go to 
www.freelists.org/archives/austechwriter

To contact the list administrator, send a message to 
austechwriter-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
**************************************************

Other related posts: