Help.. I can't get rid of Track Changes feature!!!!

[Keith Brickey]

Using Word 2003 (11.5604.5606), accepting all changes and turning Track
Changes off before saving does not prevent Track Changes being on and the
Final Showing Markup view when the document is opened. Is there a work
around for this irritating bug?

Keith Brickey

 

[Guest]

My company has been having this problem also, and it is very serious from a
legal and confidentiality perspective. For example, my boss took a proposal
from a previous client (as a template), edited it, saved it, and emailed it
to a new client. When the recipients opened the document within Outlook, the
previous text was showing (crossed out). The previous text also shows when
he opens the document in Windows. We were lucky that no proprietary or
confidential information was in the unwanted text.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Turning Track Changes off just hides the markup. You must accept all the
changes if you don't want anyone to see the tracked changes.

--
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]

Thanks. After I wrote my question, I looked it up on Microsoft Help Online.
(I didn't look there originally because I thought it had to be a bug.) I
think the logic behind the way this feature works is very flawed. One should
not have to accept one's own changes in a document, nor should someone need
to know that this is necessary.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you don't want to track changes in the document, then don't turn Track
Changes on in the first place!

--
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]

The problem is that changes are tracked even if you *never* turn on Track
Changes. This is at the heart of the issue. (See Microsoft's Online Help
article "Get rid of tracked changes and comments, once and for all.") I have
been in contact with IT at my company, and there is a free Microsoft Tool
called "Remove Hidden Data" that can be installed that helps.

Several key points:

* For there to be a problem, the person editing a document is not the
original author of the document.

* The person editing the document is not *intentially* using Track Changes.
Herein lies the crux of the issue: Track Changes is working in the
background without our knowledge *every time we use a previous document as a
template.* For example, you, Suzanne, take a document called “Company ABC
Proposal 2000,†authored in 2000 by Fred, your co-worker. You open it and
start editing it *without turning on Track Changes.* You rename it “Company
XYZ Proposal 2004,†and save it. It looks perfect to you on your screen.
You send it to Incredibly Important Bigwig from Company XYZ.

* There are several ways that Bigwig can see the changes you have made to
your document:

-- On his copy of Word, under Tools --> Options --> Security, the check box
entitled “Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving†is checked.
This checkbox is checked *by default* for users of Word 2002 and 2003. In
this case, when he opens your document, Word shows him all your changes, on
purpose, by default.
-- While viewing your document, Bigwig turns on the Reviewing Toolbar (the
one that is used to Track Changes), under View --> Toolbars --> Reviewing,
and makes use of several functions, such as the Display for Review drop-down
box or the "Show" button.

This is *not* a case of multiple people working together on a document using
Track Changes and then being sloppy and not accepting or rejecting changes.
Rather, it is the case that any time you edit a document that you did not
author, *it is no longer a clean document.* It contains changes that you
thought were invisible but that can be seen by others.

Therefore, deliberate measures must be taken, each time people at my company
send out an edited document, to either accept all changes (invisible or
otherwise), or use the Remove Hidden Data tool. Another co-worker pointed
out that we can save documents that need to be sent electronically as PDF
files.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you are receiving documents that have tracked changes in them, then of
course there will be tracked changes. But if you do not turn Track Changes
on, *your* changes will not be tracked. You can do what you must to get rid
of tracked changes in the documents you receive, but this strikes me as a
user education issue. The bottom line is that Word does not track any
changes unless Track Changes is turned on (I reject utterly your statement
that Track Changes is on automatically in a document containing tracked
changes), and hiding them does not remove them. If you want the tracking
removed before you send out a document, you must accept or reject the
changes. The very reason that Word 2002 and 2003 by default display tracked
changes when you open or save a document is to prevent you from
embarrassment.

--
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]

Please let me know if you have read the Microsoft Online Help article I
referenced earlier,"Get rid of tracked changes and comments, once and for
all." If you read it, then we'll be on the same page. Everything I said below
is from that article and from talking to my IT department. In fact, it is
from reading this article that I know that Microsoft did this on purpose to
"help" us. What I am saying is that it is not helping.

Perhaps that's the bug: The "Make hidden markup visible when opening and
saving" checkbox (checked by default for Word 2003 users) is supposed to
ensure that any hidden tracked changes will be revealed when we save a
document. Instead, the changes are *not* visible when we save the document;
rather, they are only visible when *opening* the document. That is why the
problem is so severe; we edit a document *without turning on track changes*,
save it, it looks fine (no tracked changes visible), and we send it to a
client, and only when the client opens the document do the marks become
visible.

At my company, we have received requests for proposals from government
officers with numerous tracked changes visible in the document, we have
personally sent proposals to clients multiple times where we discovered later
that tracked changes became visible, and our HR department has sent us many
documents with tracked changes visible. I know for a fact that this happened
to my boss when he *absolutely did not* have track changes on when he edited
the document; the changes were so minor that only an idiot would turn on
track changes to make them, plus he told me he didn't use track changes. It
is quite clear to me that these professionals are not morons who are sending
these documents out with the tracking visible on their screens.

As a former full-time Microsoft usability engineer, it is my opinion that if
this is a serious "usability bug" rather than a "user education" issue. It
appears from the article referenced above that Microsoft knows that people
are sending out important documents without knowing that the tracking will
show when the recipient receives the document. Why they would allow that to
continue, I don't know.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If you will provide a link to the article, I will be happy to read it.

--
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]

Here it is.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010983881033.aspx

I could find this article by searching under "track changes" in Word 2003
(at work), but could not find it when searching under "track changes" in Word
2002 Service Pack 2 (on my home computer).

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Valerie,

As Suzanne has tried to explain Tracked Changes are *not* enabled
unless you perform one the of the following actions:

- Go to Tools/Track Changes
- Go to Tools/Protect Document and select "Tracked Changes"
- Double-click "TRK" in the status bar to make it appear bold
- Run a macro that turns on Tracked Changes

If Tracked Changes are not enabled then modifications you make to a
document are *not* stored in the document. Perhaps you should read the
article you previously cited a little closer:

"Get rid of tracked changes and comments, once and for all"
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010983881033.aspx

Quote:
"How did those revisions and comments get there?
You may have thought that you removed the comments or revisions, or
you may have received the document from someone else without realizing
that it contained comments or revisions. How does Word store these
items without you being aware of them?

You or the person who sent the document may have hidden the revisions
or comments. Hiding them does not remove them, however; they remain in
the document. Depending on your version of Word and the settings you
are using, the revisions or comments may reappear when you or someone
else opens the document."

Now, I will grant you that the Security Option they added in Word
2002, "Make hidden markup visible when opening and saving", does not
show the markup when saving. This is not a bug but rather a text
error. IOW the word "saving" should have been omitted. Users who
prefer to edit a document in the final version, rather than displaying
markup, would *not* become extremely annoyed if Tracked Changes turned
themselves back on every time they saved a document.

This option was added for those users who do not realize they have
Tracked Changes enabled and would unknowingly send out documents
containing tracked changes.

Prior to Word 2002 you could hide Tracked Changes at the document
level. A user could go to Tools/Highlight Changes and turn on "Track
changes while editing" and turn *off* "Highlight changes on screen"
and "Highlight changes in printed document". These options were stored
in the document so if another user opened the document they would need
to note "TRK" in bold in the status bar to know if Tracked Changes
were enabled. There were no other visual clues.

I suspect that is what you are encountering. You may have been using a
previous version of Word and didn't realize Tracked Changes were
enabled. That would be easy enough to do if the options I previously
described were set in your Normal.dot. In that case all new documents
would automatically have Tracked Changes turned on. Or the same
modifications could have been saved in a template you based new
documents on. Or of course if you reuse documents by opening a
previously created document and using Save As to create a new one.

Now that you have a later version of Word, in which Microsoft made
change the behavior of Tracked Changes by no longer storing options to
suppress the view of Tracked Changes in the document and automatically
displaying Tracked Changes when opening a document provided the
security option is enabled, you are now aware of unknowingly creating
documents with Tracked Changes enabled.

You may have thought they weren't enabled but I can state with 100%
certainty that they *were* enabled.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Beth Melton]

Whoops! This paragraph should have read:

"Users who prefer to edit a document in the final version, rather than
displaying markup, *would become extremely annoyed* if Tracked Changes
turned themselves back on every time they saved a document."

It originally said: "would *not* be happy campers".

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Guest]

I appreciate both of you spending the time to explain this issue. Let us
assume that you have a better understanding of how this feature is working;
you are, after all, the Word experts, not I.

I still maintain that this is a serious usability issue, as evidenced by the
fact that employees of, for example, the Department of Defense and my
company, a top-ten multinational survey and market research firm, are
regularly encountering this problem. When it happens, they are unaware that
it has happened, don't know why it happened if they do notice it, and don't
know how to prevent it from happening in the future. Also, the posts that
have been going back and forth have been extremely lengthy and complicated;
not the sign of the simplicity and transparency of a feature.

This is the type of usability issue that is harder to catch because it
springs from real-life scenarios that may not have occurred to the developers
during the design phase.

 

[Guest]

Also, the fact that Microsoft offers a free web tool to "Remove Hidden
Changes" from documents, and the fact that Microsoft offers a lengthy and
complicated Online Help article on the topic, is further evidence that this
feature is causing some problems.

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Valerie,

The simple fact of the matter is Word does not keep editing changes
you make to a document unless Tracked Changes are enabled.

The lengthy details I provided were simply an effort to help you
understand why you may be unknowingly encountering Tracked Changes.
Yes, there were usability issues in the past with the
Revisions/Tracked Changes but Microsoft has taken great strides in
attempting to eliminate these issues.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Beth Melton]

Hi Valerie,

The Remove Hidden Data utility does more than remove Tracked Changes
if they are found in a document. It is a metadata removal tool.

Metadata is information stored in the document that may reveal
Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Which, btw, is not limited
to Microsoft applications. Files created in any application,
regardless of the manufacturer, will contain some type of metadata.

And yes, you are correct there is a growing concern for PII which is
why Microsoft created the utility to aid in the removal of PII prior
to sending out documents containing sensitive information.

Why is this tool necessary? Personally I believe part of it is due to
users not getting the necessary training for the tools they use daily.
For example in order to drive a car you aren't handed a drivers
license - you receive training and must pass a test first.

Those who use various applications in their daily activities should
also receive proper training and without it they muddle along clicking
aimlessly and do the best they can. Then unfortunately when they
encounter an issue that was created as a result of their lack of
knowledge they attempt to blame it on the application.

If you want to know more about metadata then read on, if you prefer
simplicity then stop here. ;-)
------------
Metadata can be categorized in two basic groups, information the user
can control and information that is automatically stored.

It is the information that the user controls that can lead to the
recovery information still stored in the document but are unable to
immediately see it on-screen.

For the most part those are:
- "Fast Saves" turned on in Tools/Options/Save. A fast save simply
appends revisions to the document rather than completely rewriting the
file.
- A document protected for Tracked Changes. You will see "TRK" in bold
in the status bar if this is the case.
- Document Versions, these are found under File/Versions
- Hidden text
- Comments
- Metadata in embedded objects

The metadata that is automatically stored with the file is the type of
information people wish to remove to maintain anonymity.

That is information such as:
- Your name
- Company name
- Previous authors
- Previous file locations
- Previous file names
- File/Properties (Fields such as Author, Title, and Company are
automatically filled in when you create a document)

All of the above can be removed without the use of the Hidden Data
Removal utility, however the utility was created to provide simplicity
and transparency for users.

--
Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[Guest]

So are you saying that if all changes have been accepted in a document that
the recipient of the document will not see any editing, whether or not they
have the tracking feature on?

Rachel

 

[Guest]

Are you saying that if all changes have been accepted, or if tracking changes
was not used, that the recipient of the document will not see any editing?

Regardless of their settings and whether or not they have the tracking
feature on.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The recipients will not see any of *your* editing. If they have Track
Changes on, they'll see their own editing.

--
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]

Clearly we are looking at this issue from vastly different vantage points and
we are not going to agree. Although I must say that I am unlikely to kill
anyone while driving Word without a license!

But let me ask you this: Is it intentional that whatever document you open
(even a new one called "Document 1") opens in "Final showing markup" mode
(using Word 2003)? This happens regardless of whether you have "Make hidden
changes visible when opening or saving" checked or not. A colleague pointed
this out to me on Friday.