Word - Revision Tracking

[Diane-Word-HELP]

In Word 2007, is there a way to track changes if the document is in
protect-mode? Or, a work-around to do this? I have a Q&A document where I
added continous section breaks between the question and answer in order to
lock the question from being editable but still being able to type in the
answer. HELP!

 

[Jay Freedman]

In Word 2007, is there a way to track changes if the document is in
protect-mode? Or, a work-around to do this? I have a Q&A document
where I added continous section breaks between the question and
answer in order to lock the question from being editable but still
being able to type in the answer. HELP!

You can turn off the protection, turn on Track Changes, and then restart the
protection. The Track Changes will still be turned on. You'll have to
unprotect the document to turn off Track Changes.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Diane-Word-HELP]

Thank you Jay... that is what I thought but my client does not want to
unprotect the document to reset. I'm assuming there isn't a way. Thanks for
your response.

 

[Jay Freedman]

There is a way. In essence, you can "hide" the unprotect/toggle
tracking/reprotect sequence inside a macro, like this:

Sub ToggleTrackChanges()
Dim theDoc As Document
Dim oldProtected As WdProtectionType
Set theDoc = ActiveDocument

If theDoc.ProtectionType <> wdNoProtection Then
oldProtected = theDoc.ProtectionType
theDoc.Unprotect
End If

theDoc.TrackRevisions = Not theDoc.TrackRevisions

If oldProtected <> wdNoProtection Then
theDoc.Protect Type:=oldProtected, NoReset:=True
End If
End Sub

See http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm for instructions if needed.
Then add a button to the Quick Access Toolbar to run the macro (right-click
the toolbar, choose Customize, select the Macros category, select
ToggleTrackChanges, and click Add). It will all happen invisibly; the
document will be unprotected only for the few milliseconds it takes to
change the Track Changes setting.

There is one possible problem: if the document's protection has been
assigned a password, then the macro will fail on the Unprotect statement. If
needed, I can modify the macro to ask for the password.

 

[Diane-Word-HELP]

THANK YOU, AGAIN. I'll need to talk to my client but I don't think she wants
to give the user the ability to unprotect the document to turn on the track
mode. She wants User #1 to fill in the answer section then send the file to
Users 2+ to make track changes to these sections without having to
turn-on/off anything...will this macro take care of this?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Well, that's a bit of a problem. Each user would have to have access to the
macro. While it's possible to store a macro in a document (which would have to
be saved as a "macro-enabled document" with a .docm extension), the macro would
be disabled unless the document is stored in a trusted location and/or it's
digitally signed (and, depending on the user's settings, it still might be
disabled). The alternative would be to distribute the form as a template (.dotm)
file, which would also have to be placed in a trusted location.

I don't yet have any experience with passing around a Word 2007 macro-enabled
file to multiple users, but my impression is that the situation has become more
complicated rather than less.

It occurs to me, somewhat belatedly, that there's a much better way to handle
this. Get rid of the document protection and the section breaks. Instead,
enclose each question in a content control -- you'll find these on the Developer
tab of the ribbon; you can just select an existing question and click the Rich
Text content control button. Then click the Properties button and check the
boxes for "Content control cannot be deleted" and "Content control cannot be
edited". Leave the answer area as ordinary text, which will be editable and can
support Tracked Changes. As long as every user who edits the document has Word
2007, this will do everything you've asked for.

 

[Diane-Word-HELP]

Thanks a million! I'll try it Monday. Have a nice weekend.