Master Documents and Subdocuments

Source Relationship:

http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships/subDocument

A master document shall be represented by an instance of a WordprocessingML document whose Main Document (§11.3.10) part targets each of that master document’s subdocuments.

[: Sometimes, it is convenient to deal with a document as a collection of pieces, especially when those pieces might be edited by different authors in a collaborative group. Perhaps it simply makes sense to think about a book as a collection of chapters rather than as one big document. The breaking-up of a document into such pieces can be achieved by having a master document with one or more subdocuments. ]

example:

<Relationships xmlns="…">
  <Relationship Id="rId5" 
    Type="http://…/subDocument" 
    Target="Start.docx" TargetMode="External"/>
  <Relationship Id="rId6" 
    Type="http://…/SubDocument" 
    Target="Middle.docx" TargetMode="External"/>
  <Relationship Id="rId7" 
    Type="http://…/SubDocument" 
    Target="End.docx" TargetMode="External"/>
</Relationships>

The master document’s Main Document part contains <subDoc> elements that reference its subdocuments:

<w:document xmlns:r="…" xmlns:wx="…" …>
  <w:body>
    <w:p …>
      <w:pPr>
        …
      </w:pPr>
    </w:p>
    <w:subDoc r:id="rId5"/>
    …
    <w:subDoc r:id="rId6"/>
    …
    <w:subDoc r:id="rId7"/>
    …
  </w:body>
</w:document>

A subdocument shall be represented by an instance of a WordprocessingML package.

A subdocument shall be located external to the package containing the source relationship (expressed syntactically, the @TargetMode attribute of the <Relationship> element shall be External).