how to split a user manual

[milko259349307s4y]

Good morning,
I have a single user manual that contains:
- general informations
- safety
- product presentation (technical data)
- reception and handling
- installation
- switching on and off
- maintenance
- software documentation
- maintenance
- various
I would like to divide this manual into several manuals:
- hardware manual
- User manual (+software)
- Maintenance manual (+ spare parts)
- Datasheets

I had thought of applying conditions to the text and activating or deactivating them to produce the various documents. Unfortunately this doesn't go well with cross referencing.
I could manage the manuals as a single book...
Obviously every manual must have its own index.

Finally it could be contents shared between manuals...

Unfortunately the content collection tool doesn't work well with cross-references...

waiting for your comment, I will proceed as follows:
I create "n" book documents to aggregate documents and produce all the manuals I need.

How would you do it?
Thank you.

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

You can create a separate INDD document for each part / section / chapter of your manual. 

Then you can combine those separate INDD documents using Book feature. 

You can use the same INDD document in multiple books - INDB files. 

You can have separate - independent - TOC, index, etc. for each book. 

Cross-refs / Hyperlinks / Bookmarks also should work. 

[milko259349307s4y]

grazie @Robert at ID-Tasker 

è una buona idea

[Barb Binder]

Hi @milko259349307s4y:

Are you already up and running on InDesign?

I just want to point out that FrameMaker (Adobe's other page layout application) is designed for technical document layout and offers better conditional text and cross-reference controls than InDesign (and better control over basically everything that pertains to technical document layout). If this is intriguing, you can download a white paper comparing the two products here (and also sign up for a free demo):

https://www.adobe.com/products/framemaker/whitepaper-framemaker-vs-indesign.html

As a career trainer on both applications, I will say that if you already know InDesign, that should factor into the decision, but if you don't know either, I'd definitely pause and take a look at the comparison between the two to see if FrameMaker  is a better match for your particular publications. 

~Barb