TechTarget Article: Using Master Documents in OpenOffice Writer

I've written an article for TechTarget.com about using master documents in OpenOffice.org Writer.

http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1230368,00.html

Master documents are used to combine lots of other Writer documents. They're similar to Word master files or Frame book files in that they organize your subdocuments, let you create a unified table of contents, etc.  They're a bit picky but once you've got them set up, they work quite reliably.

I've also written an article for TechTarget.com about how to bring spreadsheets into master documents, too. You link the spreadsheet to a Writer document, then bring that "dummy" writer document into your master document. It's a hack but a practical hack since big publications often need to combine different document types. There's an approach (even hackier, but useful) for bringing in presentation content, too.

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Comments

[Bryan Girard]

Solveig,

Thank you for this. It helps, but does not quite solve my problem. My problem is that I am using multiple documents in a Master Document, which each have separate Chapter names & numbers (done with Paragraph Styles). When I put these into a MD, all the numbers are sequential. The names also take on the outline numbering name of the MD. I used your helpful tip on resetting the numbering at the start of each doc, which puts everything numbered right, but the chapter names are still not right, and I cannot seem to work around it in the MD headers. I tried using the file names as a chapter name, but the fields stuff in the MD doesn't allow me to put subdoc file names in the headers. Is what I am trying to do possible with OOo?

Thanks