Creating a short document from a long one without manually cutting

[Guest]

Hope this isn't a double post...the system seemed to reject it first time
though.

The short version: I want to create a sort of master document for which
every piece of text belongs to one (or more) categories. I then want to be
able to create new documents from this master by selecting which categories I
want to keep, and which I want to discard. Is this viable in Word 2002? Or
am I just going to have to create these documents the old fashioned way by
cutting and pasting? If it's not viable in Word 2002, is there another piece
of software that it will work for? Note that whilst I *could* fit the
categories into a strict hierarchy, it would be less useful, so I'm not
looking for advice on that sort of approach (at least, not yet!)

A bit more detail on what I'm doing here (probably non-essential to save
reading time for those who have no idea how to answer the above...or even
those that do!)

I'm putting my school notes into computer format. I'm a math student, so
the categories I'm interested in are things like definitions, statements of
theorems, proofs of those theorems and so on. Sometimes what I'm after when
using these notes is just the definitions and theorem statements. Sometimes
I'm not bothered about the definitions, I just want the theorems (sometimes
with and sometimes without proof). This is why a strict hierarchy is not
ideal, although if I have to fall back on that then I will. This document is
going to be hundreds, possibly eventually thousands, of pages long, with each
snippet of text just a few lines and all the categories intermixed, so a
subdocument approach isn't going to work very well as I understand it, unless
it's possible to group subdocuments together (and even then it would mean a
horrendous amount of subdocuments).

Hope someone can help. I'm eager to get working. Well, sort of! ;-)

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Do not use master/subdocuments - even if it looks as though it might work.
Doing so puts your entire project at risk!

You might look into AutoText. You would create a template and save your
entries as AutoText, using different styles for the AutoText as it is saved.
These styles create and name your categories. You could then, in documents
created from the AutoText, insert each entry in a category.

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AutoText.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/AutoTextList.htm. You can put a custom
toolbar in your template that has an AutoTextList on the menu (like the one
on the HeaderFooter toolbar).
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




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This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Do not use master/subdocuments - even if it looks as though it might work.
Doing so puts your entire project at risk!

You might look into AutoText. You would create a template and save your
entries as AutoText, using different styles for the AutoText as it is saved.
These styles create and name your categories. You could then, in documents
created from the AutoText, insert each entry in a category.

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/AutoText.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/AutoTextList.htm. You can put a custom
toolbar in your template that has an AutoTextList on the menu (like the one
on the HeaderFooter toolbar).
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.