Does anyone use MSWord for copyflow or version control?

[rstar]

Trying to establish a copy flow system in a communications office where
everyone uses MS Word. I realize there is some version control built in,
saving with a (2) or (3), but I was hoping to set up something more specific.
Track changes seems to be beyond many users here. Has anyone come up with a
good system, or used other MS tools for determining who has edited what?

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hello rstar

Trying to establish a copy flow system in a communications office where
everyone uses MS Word. I realize there is some version control built in,
saving with a (2) or (3), but I was hoping to set up something more specific.
Track changes seems to be beyond many users here. Has anyone come up with a
good system, or used other MS tools for determining who has edited what?

Word's own "versioning" was not very popular: with large documents (and
folks using versioning tend to work with larger documents, it introduced
a new level of complexity into the document format that was not welcome
in an environment where document corruption is feared. I can't check at
the moment but ISTR that the feature itself has been scrapped from Word
2007.

In serious environments, there are external versioning/DMS applications
where you check in/out each file you create (not only Word documents).

Another approach is simply to create copies of large/important files at
least once each day (kind of a backup history).

If collaboration on the same document by different people is the aim,
then, well, TrackChanges is probably the way to go. The Compare feature
has seen mixed reviews, but since I've never really seen it used in
critical environments, I couldn't really say much on it.

HTH
Robert