Help: Protected Subdocuments

[Guest]

I have a number of Protected Word docs (some areas are editable) that I want
to bring into a Master document as Subdocuments. When I do this, I find that
all the Subdocuments are still protected, and I cannot unlock them or
unprotect them.
When I try to Unlock a subdoc, I get the message: "The operation cannot be
completed because the subdocument has a different type of protection from the
master document. Make the protection the same for the master document and all
subdocuments."
I don't know what this means, since I have NO protection or locking on the
master document.

This is so critical, because I can't convert the subdocs to be part of the
master doc until I can unlock them. And I don't want to have to individually
unprotect 40 documents before I pull them into the Master doc. There MUST be
a way to do this, can someone please help?!!

Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Marianne

The command Tools > UNprotect Doc is not available; when I go to the menu,
only Tools > Protect Doc shows.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Sorry, I don't have an answer because I don't use Master Documents. However,
you may need the reason I don't more than you need an answer. "Master
Document" is a term of art in Word referring to a "feature" that not only
doesn't work but also destroys documents. The consensus (with the limited
exception of Steve Hudson) among those offering advice on these newsgroups
is that using the Master Document feature is a good way to destroy your
document. It can destroy parts of your document that you are not even
working on! I think John McGhie said it succinctly when he said that there
are two kinds of Master Documents: Those that are corrupt and those that
will be corrupt soon. See
http://www.addbalance.com/word/masterdocuments.htm for information on the
Master Document feature and workarounds. See
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/WhyMasterDocsCorrupt.htm for more
information on what goes wrong, and
http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm for ideas on how
to salvage what you can. See
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/technical/masterdocs.doc for
Steve Hudson's instructions if you are willing to follow them very
carefully.

--

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.

 

[Guest]

Hi,
Thanks for all the useful links and the important tip - I think I will go
with the recommendation and find a different way to do this!
thanks
Marianne

 

[Hagridore]

Okay, folks, now that we've had our fun saying why we shouldn't use a
feature, I still need an answer to the original question. I am a teacher of
Word and the Master/Sub document feature is part of the Word Expert MOS
requirements. I have run into exactly the same problem that started this
little conversation. Frankly, since I'm running into several very weird
things...macros that are saved and then disappear when the document is
openned again, etc., I'm thinkiing that the files we're working with from the
text book folk are corrupted in some way. But, that said, here's the
problem...

We were doing an exercise which had us add some subdocuments to a master
document, then protect both for tracking changes only. Everything worked
well to this point. Then we were told to unprotect them. This appeared to go
well. But then, when we reopened the master document, we ran into the
subdocuments being locked, and received the message that started this
conversation when we tried to unlock them. However, going into the protect
document part of both the subdocument and the master document reveals no
protectiion set for either one. So there isn't a different level set, but
the system thinks there is. As it turns out, this means we cannot do the
remainder of the exercise, which requires marking a major portion of one of
the subdocuments for inclusin in an index. Is there anyone out there who can
help?