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General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for software to manage and merge various MS word documents

« Last post by kenner81 on July 12, 2012, 10:49 AM »

I work pretty much on manuals.  For example if the hardware requirements change, I'd rather create a chapter or page entitled "hardware requirements" , edit that document, then have a program replace that chapter/page with my new chapter/page in all of the documents that use that chapter/page rather than manually go through each one.

I'll review each recommendation to see which works best for me.

2

General Software Discussion / Looking for software to manage and merge various MS word documents

« Last post by kenner81 on July 10, 2012, 12:28 AM »

I have to deal with creating many documents.  Each document has 4-10 chapters.  Many times the same chapter can be found in multiple documents.
Whenever I update a particular chapter, I have to track down each document that uses that particular chapter and replace it with the new chapter.
It's very tedious and time consuming.

Here's a sample of what I do. 
I write 6 word documents: Chapter A, B, D, E, J, and R
I then merge the various documents in different orders with different chapters (e.g.
Document 1 : chapter A,  Chapter B,  Chapter D
Document 2:  chapter E, Chapter B, Chapter J
Document 3: Chapter B, chapter J, Chapter R
If I revise chapter B, I have to manually go into Document 1,2,3 and update chapter B. Save each document and identify it as a new version (e.g. Document 1 ver2

Does anyone know of software that could help make this easier and automate the process?
Optimally, I'd like to be able to edit a chapter, and have the software keep track of which documents use that chapter, then auto update just that chapter.