Help me save my report from the reviewers!

[Ed]

There are people who drive their car by turning the key and pressing the gas
pedal, and never think about things like oil or radiator fluid. And there
are people who use Word by opening a document and typing away, never
thinking about Styles or other electronic niceties. It's like giving a
two-year-old a hammer to play with next to your fine china!

Unfortunately, such are the people who review, add comments to, and make
edits in my reports! Can someone please tell me how a document written in a
nicely formatted US-English Normal style comes back needing the Swedish
dictionary to spell-check??!? (And if that was all there was, I wouldn't be
posting here!)

Okay - obviously I am not the pinnacle of knowledge about Word myself. But
I would really like to know if there is anything I can do to protect my
report from these people? I'd love to give them a paper copy and a red pen,
but that's not possible. Any suggestions are welcome.

Ed

 

[ausongbird]

Once Office 2007 is released, you'll be able to lock the template down
so that they can only use styles which you give them and absolutely
nothing else. But until then, you're stuck. I have a client who has
this problem because they edit manuscripts for publication and the
authors put in all kinds of nutty stuff that isn't in the template.

 

[Ed]

Thanks for the response, Betty. I'm not really going to be able to use that
feature, though - all of this is based on Normal, because the others are not
going to have my templates. I often have to begin by modifying documents
produces elsewhere. I might be able to copy everything over to my own
template and do some things that way, but in my low-on-the-food-chain
position, I'm not able to impose sweeping changes like templates.

Ed

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I feel your pain, but I don't know what to suggest. Perhaps limit them to
comments rather than revisions?

--
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.

 

[Ed]

Perhaps limit them to

comments rather than revisions?

Oh, how I wish I had the power! <G!>

(BTW, I'm using Windows and Word XP.) Is there a type of "lock" that can be
put on a style so whatever they do it won't screw things up too bad? Maybe
I'm displaying the degree of _my_ ignorance here - I know if they click into
the paragraph and type, it formats in the Style of that paragraph. Copy and
paste, though, are totally different animals - and they will pick up chunks
from various other reports and drop them into my report, change a few words
to "make it fit", and I get to live with the hodge-podge. Is there a way to
make the pasted-in bits pick up the Style of my doc, rather than retain the
Style they were written in? (Paste Special - Unformatted, I know - but I
can't force that, can I?)

If they change a header and it loses the Style the TOC is looking for,
that's going to break things, right?

And I have the "tabs set left indent" turned off - how do they manage to run
it back on? Does that also come with bits they paste in?

Ed

 

[Guest]

I have this kind of problem all the time where I work. I use these principles.

First, I NEVER give them "my" copy of the document. I keep my clean copy in
a protected folder that only I have access to. Then I create a review copy
that I distribute to the children with hammers (CWH) for review. Before I
send the CWH a review copy, I re-name the document (so I never get a review
copy mixed up with my clean copy) and I accept all changes and then turn on
the change tracking so I can see what they do.

Second, I NEVER use regular copy and paste to import changes from the CWH
into my clean copy. I only use Paste Special - Unformatted text. That loses
any special attributes, such as italics or superscript, but it saves me lots
of headaches.

This means I have to re-do everything that they have done, but it keeps the
CWH out of my clean copy. I can also see what different reviewers have done.
If Abbott wants to expand a section and Costello wants to delete the same
section, I can see the potential conflict and can get with Abbott and
Costello to resolve the difference.

I hope this helps.

Fred

 

[Ed]

This means I have to re-do everything that they have done,
Sometimes the changes are so vast, it's easier to accept them and go on than
re-doing it all. (One guy, rather than pasting in a sample paragraph and
inserting a comment "Make it look like this", redid seven pages! I guess he
had to justify his "higher level" of editorial name plate!)

I suppose the best way would be to go through and check all Changes, then
reset the paragraph style as appropriate. I guess as long as there are
"children with hammers", there is going to be the time-consuming task of
rebuilding what they've "fixed". (It wouldn't be so bad if they at least
knew the basics of this big electronic hammer they use . . . )

Ed

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Ed

Thanks for the response, Betty. I'm not really going to be able to use that
feature, though - all of this is based on Normal, because the others are not
going to have my templates. I often have to begin by modifying documents
produces elsewhere. I might be able to copy everything over to my own
template and do some things that way, but in my low-on-the-food-chain
position, I'm not able to impose sweeping changes like templates.

I don't really see the connection to your Normal.dot. Even in Word 2003,
you can "lock down" your document and offer the user only a predefined
set of styles.

If you don't want to use that feature: if you cannot teach the reviewers
to use only Word's comment feature, for instance, you will always have
to do a lot of "manual" afterwards.

HTH
Robert

 

[Guest]

"Resetting the style" doesn't always undo all the damage they've done. If
they've pasted anything from another document into their review copy, they
may well have put the entire style sheet from that other document into the
review copy. I've had reports come back to me with as many as five Heading 1
styles stacked on top of each other.

If you use Paste Special - Unformatted Text, you can paste those seven pages
of text into your clean copy without bring any styles over. You still need
to add any italics, bold, superscript, etc., but you don't trash your
template.

Fred

P.S. If this post was helpful, please click Yes for the question "Was this
post helpful." Thanks!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Word 2002 doesn't offer this feature; Word 2003 does, but it depends on
everyone using that version: if a Word 2000/2002 user opens a Word 2003
document in which you have protected styles, my understanding is that the
entire document is locked. I think Idaho Word Man's approach is probably
better than that.

--
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.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Luckily, I'm in a position where I can give my clients hard copy and make
them mark that up. I don't let them get their hands on "my" file!

--
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.

 

[Ed]

So perhaps one help might be to purge the document of any Styles not used in
the doc. That way, I can tell at a glance at the Styles organizer what
might have crept in. And if all Styles used have my own unique names, I
won't risk an "automatically update Style" on their machine messing with my
document (although I have ~no idea~ why their Normal style wants the Swedish
dictionary!).

Using Accept and Reject Changes - if the change is pasted-in text, will
accepting it accept the Style also, or just the text with any character
formatting?

Ed

 

[AUSongbird]

If you're in Office 2003, there is a "clear formatting" option under
the formatting task pane. When I've got a thoroughly mucked up doc, I
Ctrl+A to select all and then clear the formatting. Then I apply my
template and see what happens.

Betty

 

[AUSongbird]

If you're in Office 2003, there is a "clear formatting" option under
the formatting task pane. When I've got a thoroughly mucked up doc, I
Ctrl+A to select all and then clear the formatting. Then I apply my
template and see what happens.

Betty

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

All that Clear Formatting does is apply Normal style, which you can equally
well do using Ctrl+Shift+N.

--
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.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

All that Clear Formatting does is apply Normal style, which you can equally
well do using Ctrl+Shift+N.

--
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.