A system and method for electronically managing composite documents including a repository of electronically stored individual documents, where a subset of the individual documents are associated with other individual documents to form composite documents. A search tool is also provided for locating a selected individual document, where the selected individual document is associated with a selected composite document. A selection tool for selecting a function to be applied to the selected individual document includes an option to apply the function to other individual documents within the selected composite document. This allows the selected individual document to be operated on individually or with the other individual documents within the selected composite document.