One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Franklin Ryan
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One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Post by Franklin Ryan »

Hello, I have a master training document that will be on one company letterhead/format that I want to be able to make changes to and wanted to know if there was a way for me to make other word documents with another company letterhead/format with the same content as the master document.

Ultimately I am trying to prevent form having to make multiple updates (grammatical, deletions, add photos, etc.) to several documents and just make them on the master training document. I want changes that I make to the master document to update to each of the other documents.

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HansV
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Re: One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Post by HansV »

Welcome to Eileen's Lounge!

If you create the letterhead as a linked image stored on a central location (a network server if it is for use within a company, or on an internet site if it is for global use), editing or replacing that image would affect all documents that contain a link to it.

If that is not feasible, it would be very complicated - I don't see an easy solution.
Best wishes,
Hans

Franklin Ryan
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Re: One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Post by Franklin Ryan »

Thank you Hans for the fast reply! If not word, would publisher be better/easier?

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HansV
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Re: One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Post by HansV »

I don't know much about Publisher, but I doubt it.

Let's see if one of our Word experts chimes in...
Best wishes,
Hans

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macropod
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Re: One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Post by macropod »

Better still (IMHO), would be to create a source document with all your boilerplate content and no letterhead, then create a document for each company and use an INCLUDETEXT field in each of those pointing to the source document.

See: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/off ... f950fb629e

With this approach, you have the added advantage that the boilerplate content for all documents can be updated from any of the linked documents as well as in the source document itself.
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Franklin Ryan
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Re: One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Post by Franklin Ryan »

Thank you Paul! I'll give that a shot

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Charles Kenyon
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Re: One Master Document to Update Other Documents

Post by Charles Kenyon »

I use AutoText stored in a global for each company and AutoText fields in the documents. Paul' method is probably easier to maintain.

I did something similar setting up forms for a 50-office law firm with different addresses, phone numbers, and personnel to be on letterhead and signing forms.There the info was stored in two global templates, one for the regional info and one for the local info. Each office had its own local global and the relevant regional global.