Students in colleges and colleagues in a business environment often need to work together on a document. This can often include the use of comments, but it will typically involve document edits as well. But it can be difficult to locate changes that are made to the document as it is passed around between teammates, and certain revisions can get overlooked. Fortunately Microsoft Word 2010 has a feature that will track your document changes automatically.
In Word 2010, the Track Changes tool is especially useful and a must have for anyone who needs to edit a document and track changes / revisions. Its change tracking is concise, easy to see. Step 1: Open your document in Microsoft 2010 and locate the Review tab. Step 2: Locate the Track Changes icon at the top of the screen; be sure that Track Changes is disabled. If Track Changes is enabled, as in the screen shot below, be sure that you click the Track Changes icon to disable this feature before you proceed.
The steps in our guide below will show you where to go to enable the option to track changes in your document. You can follow these steps and return to this same location to turn this option off when you are done using it.
How to Enable the Track Changes Option in Word 2010
The steps below were performed in Microsoft Word 2010. Note that the option to track changes is tied to the individual document, and will remain on or off based on the last setting for that document. If you are collaborating on a document that will be submitted to a teacher or a colleague, then it is probably a good idea to accept all of the changes in the document, or mark the document as Final in the Tracking section on the Review tab.
Step 1: Open your document in Word 2010.
Step 2: Click the Review tab at the top of the window.
Step 3: Click the Track Changes button in the Tracking section of the Office ribbon.
If you wish to change the tracking options at any time, click the arrow to the right of Track Changes, then click the Change Tracking Options button.
This will give you the menu below, where you can further customize how the changes are tracked in the document. You can click the OK button when you are done adjusting the options on this window.
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How can I do 'track changes' stuff without using Microsoft Word?I use Nisus Writer Express (A word processor for OS X). My boss and everyone else in the world uses Word, of course. Both programs speak rtf, of course, so that's mostly fine, except that we're currently writing stuff that's going through multiple revisions. Instead of just printing out my manuscript and scrawling on it in red pen like he used to, my boss has just learnt how to annotate my writings with the 'track changes' thing in Word. When he sends me the rtf document back, it's pretty hard to find the changes. What I do is this: copy the original and revised documents and paste into Textwrangler, and use the 'compare' function in that. It's clunky, annoying and inconvenient, because Textwrangler just sees each paragraph as a line and lists lines that are different. And I have to work on plain text copies of the documents.
Is there a more elegant way to compare two rtf documents? Bonus points for something that specifically understands Word's change-tracking feature.
Hrm. Well. You could always run them through the Unix program diff to display changes between versions. But this will provide none of the features you probably want: one-click accept/reject, etc. Actually, as I re-read your question, you definitely want more than simple difference-finding. I don't believe that Word's 'track changes' feature obeys any standards or is inter-operable with anything else. Sorry.
I'm pretty sure that if the document you're getting back contains your boss' changes tracked by Word, then it is no longer really an RTF file. RTF is a non-Microsoft format and I do not believe that it supports this functionality. It sounds like you are doing the responsible thing: outputting a cross-platform format. Your boss is not returning the favor.
I'd need to see exactly what you're seeing to say for sure, but I think you need Word to interact with this person.
posted by scarabic at 9:48 PM on December 8, 2005
I'm pretty sure that if the document you're getting back contains your boss' changes tracked by Word, then it is no longer really an RTF file. RTF is a non-Microsoft format and I do not believe that it supports this functionality. It sounds like you are doing the responsible thing: outputting a cross-platform format. Your boss is not returning the favor.
I'd need to see exactly what you're seeing to say for sure, but I think you need Word to interact with this person.
posted by scarabic at 9:48 PM on December 8, 2005
I could be totally wrong. There may be a program out there for just your purpose. I would start with the Nisus website and see if they have a plug-in or anything of the sort.
posted by scarabic at 9:49 PM on December 8, 2005
posted by scarabic at 9:49 PM on December 8, 2005
OpenOffice.org has similar functionality (at least the XP version does) and it generally plays well with .doc files. Perhaps you could switch to that.
If you could say more about why you use Nisus instead of MS Office, you might get a better response.
posted by oddman at 9:55 PM on December 8, 2005
If you could say more about why you use Nisus instead of MS Office, you might get a better response.
posted by oddman at 9:55 PM on December 8, 2005
Openoffice does understand Word's changes-tracking, as far as I know. Because it's free, you can give a try. It may also be of assistance in converting to/from Word's own format.
posted by wzcx at 9:58 PM on December 8, 2005
posted by wzcx at 9:58 PM on December 8, 2005
You don't want to use a line-based diff, you need something like wdiff.
posted by Rhomboid at 10:11 PM on December 8, 2005
posted by Rhomboid at 10:11 PM on December 8, 2005
You know, you could use the free service WriteBoard, by 37 Signals. It's web based, supports multiple authors, basic (and some advanced) formatting and a complete revisioning system. It shows you who made what changes and when and tracks everything.
Also, it's password protected and, again, web-based. No files to send to each other. No software required, but a browser.
posted by disillusioned at 10:27 PM on December 8, 2005
Also, it's password protected and, again, web-based. No files to send to each other. No software required, but a browser.
posted by disillusioned at 10:27 PM on December 8, 2005
Openoffice does understand Word's changes-tracking, as far as I know.
I can confirm that it does work. I have used OpenOffice's track changes feature when editing business documents and there were no complaints from the MS Office lovin' fools on the other end.
posted by deadfather at 11:17 PM on December 8, 2005
I can confirm that it does work. I have used OpenOffice's track changes feature when editing business documents and there were no complaints from the MS Office lovin' fools on the other end.
posted by deadfather at 11:17 PM on December 8, 2005
Backing up OpenOffice as well, although for situations like this, I have found Writeboard to be a great option.
posted by BigBrownBear at 3:20 AM on December 9, 2005
posted by BigBrownBear at 3:20 AM on December 9, 2005
Other alternative web-based tools to help you write collaboratively: Writely, JotSpot, Foopad. These will allow you and your boss to edit pages simultaneously without having to worry about file formats, latest versions etc.
posted by blag at 4:13 AM on December 9, 2005
posted by blag at 4:13 AM on December 9, 2005
I just used OppenOffice's track changes feature on a word file the other day and the only thing that it a bit clunky is the commenting... actually, I couldn't figure out how to make it insert comments like Word does, so I just wrote them in the text YELLING so the author would know. She didn't seem to mind too much.
posted by sablazo at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2005
posted by sablazo at 6:30 AM on December 9, 2005
Thanks for your help, everyone. I thought that OpenOffice would be the best answer, but on installing version 2.0 it I discovered that it reliably crashes on opening the document I want to work on. NeoOffice/J will open the document, although it changes the fonts for some reason. But now I have at least discovered that, as I should have guessed, change-tracking doesn't work in rtf documents.
I think my solution will be to save a copy of the file in Word format, send it to the boss and hunt down the revisions in NeoOffice. I want to keep my versions of things in rtf though because Nisus is more pleasant to use and Endnote reads rtf nicely.
My reasons for not using Word are partly financial, partly religious and partly because I hate it hate it hate it. OpenOffice seems to suffer from copying MS Office too slavishly. NeoOffice, for instance, installs with options like 'change what I just typed without telling me' and 'annoy me by guessing what I'm about to type all the time' switched on by default.
I tried diff before posting my question and it was useless. Thanks for making me aware of wdiff; if I had the developer tools and Fink installed on this machine I'd give it a try, but I strongly suspect that I'd still have to convert documents to plain text first and would still have work to do to relate the output file to the original documents.
Web 2.0 collaborative tools are right out - I'm not about to try to teach the old boss new tricks.
posted by nowonmai at 9:12 AM on December 9, 2005
I think my solution will be to save a copy of the file in Word format, send it to the boss and hunt down the revisions in NeoOffice. I want to keep my versions of things in rtf though because Nisus is more pleasant to use and Endnote reads rtf nicely.
My reasons for not using Word are partly financial, partly religious and partly because I hate it hate it hate it. OpenOffice seems to suffer from copying MS Office too slavishly. NeoOffice, for instance, installs with options like 'change what I just typed without telling me' and 'annoy me by guessing what I'm about to type all the time' switched on by default.
I tried diff before posting my question and it was useless. Thanks for making me aware of wdiff; if I had the developer tools and Fink installed on this machine I'd give it a try, but I strongly suspect that I'd still have to convert documents to plain text first and would still have work to do to relate the output file to the original documents.
Web 2.0 collaborative tools are right out - I'm not about to try to teach the old boss new tricks.
posted by nowonmai at 9:12 AM on December 9, 2005
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