Anonymous tracked changes

[suroora]

I work for a research organization, and we send out papers for peer review to
anonymous reviewers. These papers are then sent back to the author with
tracked changes. Except that the author can tell who the reviewer is by
rolling the mouse over the tracked changes. Is there any way we can change
this so the tracked changes remain, but the reviewer is invisible?

Thanks!

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

The Author of a revision is a Read Only Property therefore, it cannot be
changed.

However,

If you run a macro containing the following code, it will replace text
marked for deletion with text for which the font is formatted as
strikethrough before rejecting the revision (the deletion) and for text that
has been inserted, it will format the text with a red font before accepting
the insertion. As a result of the rejection or acceptance of the
revisions, the Author of them can no longer been seen. Of course however,
the author of the document, is no longer able to accept or delete the
revisions, though it would be possible to create another macro that deletes
text which is struck through and re-formats the red text so that it is
black.

Dim arev As Revision
With ActiveDocument
.TrackRevisions = False
For Each arev In .Revisions
If arev.Type = wdRevisionDelete Then
arev.Range.Font.StrikeThrough = True
arev.Reject
ElseIf arev.Type = wdRevisionInsert Then
arev.Range.Font.Color = wdColorRed
arev.Accept
End If
Next arev
End With


--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[Stefan Blom]

That seems like a clever workaround.

An alternative option may be to use comments instead of Track Changes. The
author name and initials for a comment can be changed using a macro. For
example:

Sub ChangeCommentData()
Dim c As Comment
For Each c In ActiveDocument.Comments
c.Author = "Unkown Person"
c.Initial = "UP"
Next c
End Sub

 

[suroora]

Thanks, Doug and Stefan!

That seems like a clever workaround.

An alternative option may be to use comments instead of Track Changes. The
author name and initials for a comment can be changed using a macro. For
example:

Sub ChangeCommentData()
Dim c As Comment
For Each c In ActiveDocument.Comments
c.Author = "Unkown Person"
c.Initial = "UP"
Next c
End Sub

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Save a copy of the document with the Tools | Options | Security setting
"Remove personal information from file properties on save" enabled. All the
markup will then be labeled "Author."

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Stefan Blom]

But note that this option is only available in Word 2007.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Sorry, I meant to write that this option is available in versions *older*
than Word 2007 (or in Word 2007 if the option was enabled for a document
created in an earlier version).

Word 2007 has the Document Inspector, which offers to remove markup (which
means accepting changes and turning off Track Changes).