What Are Master Documents?

Master documents are documents that manage and organize other Writer documents. They consist of a series of links to individual sub-documents that can be opened only when needed. They offer a savings in overhead that is noticeable even on today's high-RAM machines.

When a master document is opened, sub-documents are added to it as sections. As each sub-document is opened, it is reformatted and repaginated using the master document's styles and other settings. In particular, any numbering sequences become continuous. For instance, if a paragraph style is numbered 4 in one sub-document and the next occurrence of the style is in the next sub-document, then the next occurrence is numbered 5 in the master document. This occurs even if that paragraph style originally was numbered 1. The sub-documents then can be printed or exported as a single document.

What makes master documents useful is these changes apply only within the master document. If you save the sub-documents as part of a master document and then open them again as separate documents, they revert to their original formats and page numberings.