Word 2003: Document Compare Problems

[Eriel]

While MS has advised that this feature is temperamental for complex
documents, I need to make a last attempt to solve my problem without
going to an outside utility:

Medium document is created with relatively few styles.
Document is edited without track changes.
Upon running "Compare and Merge", when the resulting document gets to
a large insertion in the body of the document, it first shows the next
paragraph (after the insert) as deleted, then properly highlights the
added text, and THEN shows the original, unchenged text as ANOTHER
addition.

Example:
ORIGINAL:

Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.

NEW VERSION:

Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the
electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for
electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.

COMPARE RESULTS:

Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

[deleted]
No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.
[deleted]

[inserted]
Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the
electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for
electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.
[inserted]

Any ideas on (a) am I doing something wrong?; (b) is this a Word
"feature" and I have to get a third-party utility?

TIA

 

[DeanH]

Sorry to say but this does sound like normal behaviour, it does depend
entirely on how the edits were done by the contributor. In the past I have
tried to test out the various different possibilites of the compare results
but have not been able to defined a constant set of logic. Your example is
for a single paragraph, unfortuantely my documents tend to be with
pages-worth of deletion and insertion!
Some collegues of mine have used a 3rd party software which they do like but
they still report oddities of behaviour, I am sure this is down to the Word
source document and user-behaviour.
Sorry to not have a useful answer for you.
All the best
DeanH

While MS has advised that this feature is temperamental for complex
documents, I need to make a last attempt to solve my problem without
going to an outside utility:

Medium document is created with relatively few styles.
Document is edited without track changes.
Upon running "Compare and Merge", when the resulting document gets to
a large insertion in the body of the document, it first shows the next
paragraph (after the insert) as deleted, then properly highlights the
added text, and THEN shows the original, unchenged text as ANOTHER
addition.

Example:
ORIGINAL:

Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.

NEW VERSION:

Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the
electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for
electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.

COMPARE RESULTS:

Section 1. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a
Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and
House of Representatives.

[deleted]
No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.
[deleted]

[inserted]
Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several states, and the
electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for
electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislature.

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the
age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that
state in which he shall be chosen.
[inserted]

Any ideas on (a) am I doing something wrong?; (b) is this a Word
"feature" and I have to get a third-party utility?

TIA