I now have my book in 1 .odt file. How do I devide it e.g. for each chapter 1 file?
How large is your final document? How powerful is your computer?
Twenty years ago, with Pentium III 600MHz processor and only 512MB memory, it made sense to divide a book into chapters. The threshold was ~300 pages.
Nowadays, there is no longer any technical reason to do this. Up to 800-1000 pages documents are easily supported by current Writer and hardware.
The main motivation to embark into master document + sub-documents is the creation of a library of reused “components” between documents. For example, you repeatedly write contracts where clauses can be chosen within some set of alternatives (which have been approved by the hierarchy, legal, finance, sales and comm’ departments). Or you have common text across your books, like your biography at end or beginning. And when your documents have a repeating structure, this “outline” can be implemented as a template document (caution! in Writer parlance a template is a special kind of a document which automatically mutates into a standard document when you open it).
Ah - my answer is mentioned on that page!
No, my document isn’t that big (27 pages).
Then it is a small book, if not “very small”. Keep it a single file and don’t go into the pain of handling a master and its sub-documents.
(It now is 27 pages, but there will become more!)
I don’t quite understand what does a small page count change. Do you want to turn your chapters to separate documents? Export as the master document. It will create separate documents per chapter, plus a master. Drop the master if you like, and use the chapter documents. It will work even if your original document has a single page - just needs that it has proper headings.
As already mentioned
Another workflow with similar implications is where different people work on the different chapters.
Either way, an important factor is what can be referred to as “style discipline”. The foundation for this is that master and subdocuments should all be based on the same template file.
- Any content in a subdocument formatted with a named style - which has a corresponding style (same name) in the master document - will be rendered according to the master document style. Good
- Any content formatted by direct formatting, or by styles which do not exist in the master document, will keep the rendering from the subdocument. Bad