Trouble-shoot large Word documents

I have users who create Word files over 1 meg in size (over 100 pages with lots of graphs and tables). Sometimes inserting additional information crashes Word and corrupts the file, sometimes the tables get corrupted. Do you have tips for working with really large documents? I am advising they use master/sub-documents.

I've only had problems and issues with Master Documents. Not really a good fix. Take a look at their graphics and make sure they are not unreasonably huge. They might try reducing the size of those before insertion, or just link to the images instead of inserting them into the doc.

I'm sure one of the MVP's will be along shortly to provide wonderful links. I've sent my users to http://word.mvps.org/index.html and told them to read read read.

Sure enough, here is a selection of links:

Why Master Documents corrupt
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/Wh...ocsCorrupt.htm

How to recover a Master Document
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/RecoverMasterDocs.htm

How can I recover a corrupt document or template - and why did it become
corrupt?
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm

Maximising the performance of Word tables
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/FastTables.htm

A document that's 100 pages and 1 MB isn't particularly large and shouldn't
cause performance problems as a single file. If you need to split the
document because different people work on different parts of the document
simultaneously, then use IncludeText and RD fields instead of Master
Documents -- and make sure the main document (with the fields) and the
"subdocuments" are all based on the same template.

There are a number of other practices that can increase or decrease the
likelihood of document corruption. The CorruptDoc.htm page lists a bunch of
things to avoid. Things to do include using styles instead of direct
formatting, linking graphics instead of embedding them, and -- above all --
being scrupulous about making daily backups.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org

Tamarakay wrote:
I've only had problems and issues with Master Documents. Not really a
good fix. Take a look at their graphics and make sure they are not
unreasonably huge. They might try reducing the size of those before
insertion, or just link to the images instead of inserting them into
the doc.

I'm sure one of the MVP's will be along shortly to provide wonderful
links. I've sent my users to http://word.mvps.org/index.html and told
them to read read read.