Revision Tracking & Highlighting

[BWheeler]

We publish reference documents for our engineering and operations staff.
These are internally written application notes that get updated from time to
time.

We use Track Changes now for editing and commenting during the feedback
review process. However, we would like to be able to highlight changes to the
users after the revision is published.

As an example, you will sometimes see technical publications where the most
recent changes to the published version have a vertical line in the left
margin indicating where changes have been made.

Is there a way to highlight revisions after the Tracked Changes are accepted?

Thanks.

Brian.

 

[Gordon Bentley-Mix at news.microsoft.com]

Brian,

I had a bit of a play around to see if there was native Word functionality
that would produce this result. What I found is that while there doesn't
appear to be anyway to have tracked changes called out _after_ the changes
have been accepted, it _is_ possible to track changes using only a vertical
line in the left margin. You didn't say what version of Word you are using,
but I did my investigation using Word 2003 and the following worked.

On the 'Track Changes' tab of the 'Options' dialog, I selected "None" for
all of the 'Markup' options except 'Changed lines', which I left as "Outside
border". Then I turned on change tracking, and what I got when I made a
change was a black vertical line in the left margin. The nice part is that
when I set all of the options back to their original values, the settings
"cascaded" back into the document. This means that you could track the
changes as per usual and then modify the settings prior to publishing the
document and be away laughing.

One thing to note though: These are "global" settings, not "document
specific". This means that if someone with different settings opens the
document, their settings will be applied. Therefore, you probably wouldn't
want to publish the documents in Word format (which really isn't that great
an idea anyway, as they could be easily modified even with protection applied
- print 'em or PDF 'em).

So I think it is possible to do what you want - almost. Just publish
_before_ you accept the changes and you should be sweet.
--
Cheers!

Gordon Bentley-Mix
Word MVP

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[BWheeler]

Word 2007 is the version we are using.

When we do a feedback review, we are generally rewriting parts of the
document. In order to make the revisions overwrite the old text, we Accept
the Changes. So, you are suggesting that we simply change the view option for
the tracked changes and all we will see is the final version with a vertical
bar at the side?

In addition, anyone modifying the document will need to keep Track Changes on.

We manage the changes to documents using SharePoint. That way only certain
users can check out and modify the official version of the document. However,
we also print copies for distribution to the Operations team.

Brian.

 

[Gordon Bentley-Mix at news.microsoft.com]

Brian,

I'm not 100% certain that the same process will work in 2007 as it does in
2003, but I suspect that it does - just haven't had the time to look yet.

Exactly how you would go about achieving the desired result is something
that you will need to work out for yourself. I was only trying to show that
there is a way to highlight changes with just a vertical line in the margin -
by configuring change tracking to just use an outside border (which is what I
suspect you've seen in other places).

This solution isn't perfect because it requires the changes to remain
"unaccepted", so it might not work for you. In addition, it's a very "manual"
and labour-intensive solution, so there is a lot of administrative control
required.

However, I can see it working (with a bit of mucking around - you would have
to accept all deletions and formatting changes and leave only the additions)
if you print the document or publish it to PDF. Unfortunately, if you're
going to "publish" in native Word format, then it's probably less than ideal.

I'm not sure what role SharePoint would play in all this - if any. Again,
this is something you would have to investigate yourself since I don't have
access to SharePoint to test.

Sorry I can't provide a more elegant solution for you. Unfortunately, the
way change tracking works (AFAIK), there's no native Word functionality that
allows revisions to be highlighted after a change has been accepted. There
may be third-party tools that support this, but out-of-the-box Word doesn't
appear to. The best you can do is kludge something together.
--
Cheers!

Gordon Bentley-Mix
Word MVP

Please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup.

Read the original version of this post in the Office Discussion Groups - no
membership required!