Strange behaviour: show/hide formatting symbols reveals old change

[David Newmarch]

In Word 2007, I'm getting some strange behaviour in a document that was
authored by someone else. Track Changes is switched off, all changes have
been accepted, and everything looks as it should in whichever view I happen
to choose (Print Layout, Draft, whatever). But when I click to show
formatting symbols (in whatever view) a whole lot of old changes - deletions
AND insertions, ostensibly all accepted, and from before the document got to
me - appear in the document, making it quite tricky to work with. These old
changes are impervious to anything I try to do with them

Editing the document, I can get by - with some inconvenience - provided I
keep formatting symbols hidden, and the document seems to print OK, but it
would be good to clean out these junk changes before I return the edited
document to the author.

The only way I have managed to get rid of the junk changes is to copy and
paste to a new document as unformatted text, but it isn't feasible to do this
for 150 pages and lose all the formatting.

Has anyone else come across this sort of thing? Any suggestions for cleaning
things up?

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

When you use the Next/Previous Change arrows, does it report that
there are no tracked changes in the document?

What happens when you choose Accept All Changes from the dropdown
below the big Accept Change icon in the Ribbon?

If somehow the changes have turned into static text, you could do two
Find/Replace operations. If they're indicated in the default way,
simply Find all text formatted as Red and Strikethrough (Ctril-H >
More > Format > Font), and Replace All with nothing (leave the Replace
box empty); then Find all text formatted as Red and Underlined and
format the Replace box with color Automatic and No Underline (you can
get No Underline by pressing Ctrl-U twice with the cursor in the box,
as well as in the Font panel).

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It would appear that the text has been formatted as Hidden. A previous user
has done this instead of using Track Changes. You should be able to delete
the Hidden text when it is displayed, and it won't come back.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[David Newmarch]

Thanks Suzanne, you hit the nail on the head!

I should have been able to spot this using Reveal Formatting, but that was
one thing that somehow just didn't occur to me. Find and Replace then quickly
cleaned it all up. Maybe I will discover in due course why the author tried
to do things that way.

And thanks, too, Peter - though that wasn't quite the problem.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

When you Show Hidden Text, it should have purple dotted underlining.

Also, how were insertions vs. deletions indicated?

 

[David Newmarch]

Hi Peter, and I appreciate your help. Yes, there is dotted underlining for
what turned out to be hidden text (though it looks black rather than purple).
That's something I hadn't previously encountered, and which I am glad to have
now learnt about.

As for insertions vs deletions, I guess they were in the end really all
deletions: repeated deletions, insertions, and redeletions, all ending up as
the hidden text - making it a real jumble - with the "final" text unhidden.
How that all came about is a mystery. As far as I know the author used Word
2007, though it may well turn out that she and/or her advisor were under some
strange misapprehension about how to track changes. But at least I'm glad to
have learned something new myself, and I shall in turn advise her with all
due humility!

Thanks very much for your input. It was good you you to spend the time.

 

[David Newmarch]

Make that "good OF you.."!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The dotted underline *is* black. Purple dotted underlines indicate smart
tags.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

I don't use either one ... but if he'd mentioned their presence, his
diagnosis would have been a lot easier!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The fact that the text showed up only when nonprinting characters were
displayed was a dead giveaway for me.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

I don't use either one ... but if he'd mentioned their presence, his
diagnosis would have been a lot easier!