Author's Name using Track Changes

[Guest]

I work in a large company that sets the user information to "Standard User."
Many people do not change their user information before making changes with
track changes turned on resulting in the author's name being "Standard User."
Does anyone know how to change the name of the author/reviewer AFTER the
document has been saved - a global replace would be great...

 

[Guest]

Hi Alan

The whole point of track changes is to mark up changes by Author. I don't
believe that Microsoft would have enabled any way of changing this
information after it has been entered as this could be open to misuse or
fraud, particularly as track changes is used in legal documents.

If your users are not disposed towards making the change to the user
information through the normal method, even if you sent them a communication
explaining why they need to do this, then you have a couple of more
complicated options. Nothing is going to solve those document that have
already been amended though. These suggestions would only prevent future
documents being marked up as a standard user.

You could run a macro on starting Word that asked the user to confirm their
user information. You could make it so that if they didn't alter the
information from the default then Word would exit.

Or you could set up a registry hack to run on logging in to your network
that wipes the contents of the user information key. This would prompt the
user to enter their information on starting an Office product. The registry
key where the information is stored for Office 2000 is
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Common\UserInfo. However, unless you have
a backup of the registry it's best not to fiddle!

Genine

 

[Guest]

The macro is an excellent idea. Thank you!

Hi Alan

The whole point of track changes is to mark up changes by Author. I don't
believe that Microsoft would have enabled any way of changing this
information after it has been entered as this could be open to misuse or
fraud, particularly as track changes is used in legal documents.

If your users are not disposed towards making the change to the user
information through the normal method, even if you sent them a communication
explaining why they need to do this, then you have a couple of more
complicated options. Nothing is going to solve those document that have
already been amended though. These suggestions would only prevent future
documents being marked up as a standard user.

You could run a macro on starting Word that asked the user to confirm their
user information. You could make it so that if they didn't alter the
information from the default then Word would exit.

Or you could set up a registry hack to run on logging in to your network
that wipes the contents of the user information key. This would prompt the
user to enter their information on starting an Office product. The registry
key where the information is stored for Office 2000 is
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Common\UserInfo. However, unless you have
a backup of the registry it's best not to fiddle!

Genine

 

[Guest]

Being the stubborn person I am … I found a way to make the change: Edit the
document using Microsoft Script Editor (available from the Visual Basic
Editor toolbar) and use the Find and Replace menu command to substitute the
correct name for the incorrect name.

 

[Guest]

Hey Alan, that is *so* scary. Thankfully it's something that the average user
isn't going to find! Well spotted!
Did you notice when you do this it changes the colours of the changes though?
Genine