Ghost Track Changes

[Guest]

I have noticed something that I can only describe as "Ghost Track Changes."
Many times, when I open a document my group created in Word 2000, Word
automatically begins tracking the changes in 2003 even when Track Changes is
NOT turned on. Read carefully, I didn't say "displays changes", I said
"tracks changes".

Here's a scenario:

I open a file and see no changes highlighted even though I have "Final
showing markup" selected. I check to see (out of habit now) if Track Changes
is turned on in the document, and it isn't. I start typing, and lo and
behold, colored change bars, text, and balloons start appearing.

I am well familiar with Track Changes, how to turn it on and off, how to
accept chages, hidden text, and all things like that. What I am not familiar
with is the mysterious ability of Word to Track Changes even after all
changes have been accepted and Track Changes has been turned off multiple
times.

Is there a solution for this?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I agree that this is bizarre and seemingly inexplicable. I'll give you the
benefit of assuming you're not pressing Ctrl+Shift+E inadvertently (much
less double-clicking TRK on the status bar), so it must be something else.
Are there any unexplained macros in Tools | Macro | Macros?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

lol - definitely not pressing CTRL+Shift+E. The only double clicking on the
status bar is in an attempt to turn it off once I notice changes are being
tracked, and that is after I try turning off Track Changes by using the
Reviewing toolbar and through the menu.

As far as macros go, we do use several standard macros in our documents.
They were all created in Word 2000, and none of them involve turning on or
off Track Changes. Unfortuantely, the phenomenom is not occuring
consistently across all documents using the macros. In fact, it is happening
in documents that don't contain any macros.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Intermittent issues, as I'm sure you know, are always the most difficult to
troubleshoot, especially if they're not even confined to a specific
document. One more wild stab: I don't suppose you have speech recognition
enabled? I've heard this sometimes picks up ambient noise (even internal
computer "noise") and generates false results.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[dedawson]

While you may have Track Changes turned off, there is a problem
associated with Heading Numbering in documents that previously had
changes tracked. Even after you have accepted all changes, inserting
new Heading Numbered paragraphs will result in the appearance of
Tracked renumbering. This tends to occur more frequently on documents
from older versions of Word that have been inflicted with spaghetti
numbering (see the MVP site for more on this). Sometimes the only
solution is to Paste | Special | Unformatted text the existing document
into a new document and then reformat.

There is also a Display problem associated with Track Changes and
Heading Numbering. In this case, you can accept a change to a Heading
Numbered paragraph and it would appear that nothing has happened. If
you scroll the changed paragraph off the top of the screen and then
back down you will see that the Accept Change has indeed been
implemented.

While not a solution, hope this at least provides a little bit of
insight.