Accepting Changes by a Single Reviewer

Sometimes, in a document that's been reviewed by several people, it's nice to be able to accept all changes by a single reviewer--maybe the author or a proofreader whose judgment you trust. (Or maybe yourself!) In Word 2002 (XP) and later versions, this is easy:

1. Click View > Toolbars > Reviewing to display the Reviewing toolbar.

2. On the toolbar, click Show > Reviewers.

3. Select the name of the reviewer whose changes you want to accept (and deselect any others that are checked).

4. Click the > Accept Change button (blue checkmark, middle of the toolbar).

5. Click Accept All Changes Shown.

In Word 97, 98, 2000, and 2001, it's not so easy; it requires a macro. This one, in fact:


Sub AcceptRevisionsByAuthor()
Dim aRevision, ThisAuthor As String
For Each aRevision In ActiveDocument.Revisions
ThisAuthor = aRevision.Author
If ThisAuthor = "Jack M. Lyon" Then
aRevision.Accept
End If
Next aRevision
End Sub

If you don't know how to use such macros, you can learn how here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706922855

When you use the macro, of course, you'll want to replace "Jack M. Lyon" with the name of your choice.

If you want to accept changes for all reviewers *except* Jack M. Lyon, you can change this line--


If ThisAuthor = "Jack M. Lyon" Then

--to this:


If ThisAuthor <> "Jack M. Lyon" Then

You can also *reject* all the changes by a single reviewer. To do so, change this line--


aRevision.Accept

--to this:


aRevision.Reject

In Word 2002 and later, you can reject all changes by a single reviewer by clicking the Reject Change/Delete Comment button (to the right of the Accept Change button) and then clicking Reject All Changes Shown.

Thanks to Anna Marshall for requesting this article.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading the previous newsletter on marking revisions for WordPerfect, Adam C. Engst wrote, "[The macro] sounds quite useful, but what about going back in the other direction? Can a macro take styled text from WordPerfect (or other app) and turn it back into revisions and comments?

I tried writing a macro to make this work but was unsuccessful. If you, gentle reader, know of a way to do this, please let me know.

Thanks to Adam for his message.

Marking Revisions for Review in Wordperfect

This week one of the editors I work with needed to show tracked revisions to an author she's working with. The problem was, the author used WordPerfect, not Microsoft Word. We tried opening the marked-up Word document with WordPerfect, but no go. Additions were there, marked in red, but deletions had reverted to regular text. Saving the document in various formats and then opening in WordPerfect brought us no joy. What to do? Well, how about a macro that checks and formats each revision? If it's an insertion, color it blue and accept it; if it's a deletion, mark it with strikeout, color it red, and accept it. Then save the document in Rich Text Format (RTF). When it's opened in WordPerfect (or any other word processor that accepts RTF), all of the changes will be visible. Here's the macro, which I hope you'll find useful:


Sub FormatRevisions()
Dim ThisRevision As Revision
For Each ThisRevision In Selection.Range.Revisions
Application.Run MacroName:="ToolsRevisionMarksNext"
If ThisRevision.Type = wdRevisionInsert Then
With Selection.Font
.Color = wdColorBlue
End With
ThisRevision.Accept
GoTo Continue
End If
If ThisRevision.Type = wdRevisionDelete Then
With Selection.Font
.StrikeThrough = True
.Color = wdColorRed
End With
ThisRevision.Reject
GoTo Continue
End If
Continue:
Next ThisRevision
End Sub

If you don't know how to use such macros, you can learn how here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706922855

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READERS WRITE

If you were unable to run the style macros in the past few newsletters, you may find this message from Eric Fletcher helpful. I already knew about Eric's tip here, but I keep forgetting to implement it, in spite of Steve Hudson's efforts to educate me. Please accept my apologies. Eric wrote:

Your style listing macros came at a perfect time for me as I'd just received a large file full of oddball styles (actually, it was from a French version of Word so the style names were also all in French!).

However, I thought I'd pass along a tip about future macros. If users have the "Require variable declaration" option set (Tools | Options dialog in VBE), these macro won't run until they add the following line to declare the "sty" variable:

Dim sty As Variant

Defining variables is not entirely necessary but is recommended. If the option is set in VBE, it sets "Option Explicit" at the top of the macro editing window and forces all variables to be defined with Dim statements. I was tearing out what hair I have left trying to work out why some of my previously-working macros started displaying errors until I realized that it had happened after I'd followed someone's advice about setting the option.

----------------------------------------

Donna Payne wrote:

I have a variation of the list styles in use macro. This is from my company's latest book, Word 2003 for Law Firms.


Sub DisplayAllStylesInUseAtInsertionPoint()
Dim oStyle As Style
Dim oRange As Range
Set oRange = Selection.Range
oRange.Collapse wdCollapseStart
For Each oStyle In ActiveDocument.Styles
If oStyle.InUse Then
oRange.InsertAfter oStyle.NameLocal
''' Some Styles cannot be displayed
''' in particular contexts
On Error Resume Next
oRange.Style = oStyle.NameLocal
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
oRange.InsertAfter " (Style Not Displayed)"
End If
On Error GoTo 0
oRange.InsertParagraphAfter
oRange.Collapse wdCollapseEnd
End If
Next oStyle
End Sub

Many thanks to Eric and Donna.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

After reading about Copernic Desktop Search (for PC) in last week's newsletter, JM, a Macintosh user, wrote:

For years [similar search capability] has been built into the operating system as part of Sherlock, the file finder. I use it almost every day. Doesn't search browser history, as far as I know. I'm on OS 9.2; assume this wonderful thing has survived the switch to OS X.

Romke Soldaat wrote:

"This mail is not entirely free of self-promotion, but if you're interested in new add-ins for Word, you may want to have a look on http://www.wordtoys.com. This package contains quite a few features that might interest editors and other linguistic professionals."

I checked out Romke's WordToys macro package, and it's chock-full of useful features. It's also free!

http://www.wordtoys.com

Many thanks to JM and Romke.

Style Macros

The August 18 issue of Editorium Update featured a macro to delete styles that exist in a Word document but are not used in that document. While I was writing that macro, I also wrote a couple of others that I thought you might find useful.

The first macro, ListCustomStyles, lists (at the end of the document) any custom styles in that document. If you need to know what weird styles your client is using, this macro will tell you what they are.

The second macro, ListStylesInUse, lists (at the end of the document) any style being used in that document.

If you don't know how to use macros like these, you can learn how here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706922855

And now, here are the macros. Enjoy!


Sub ListCustomStyles()
For Each sty In ActiveDocument.Styles
If sty.BuiltIn = False Then
Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.InsertAfter Text:=sty.NameLocal
Selection.InsertParagraphAfter
End If
Next sty
End Sub
Sub ListStylesInUse()
For Each sty In ActiveDocument.Styles
If sty.InUse = True Then
Selection.HomeKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Style = ActiveDocument.Styles(sty)
With Selection.Find
.Text = ""
.Replacement.Text = ""
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindStop
.Format = True
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
End With
Selection.Find.Execute
If Selection.Find.Found = True Then
Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdStory
Selection.InsertAfter Text:=sty.NameLocal
Selection.InsertParagraphAfter
End If
End If
Next sty
End Sub

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

In the August 11 issue, Francelia Sevin wrote:

"On my Mac in Word 2001, toggling the track changes on/off doesn't work. I still cannot copy and paste text and include the tracked changes. I have upgraded with the latest patches for 2001 and that hasn't made any difference."

I asked for help with this, and Hilary Powers responded:

That sounds like the PC Word 97 tracking-copy bug, alive and well in Mac Word 2001. If so, the PC workaround--bookmarking the material and inserting it in its new spot (with tracked changes turned off in the receiving document)--should work just fine. To move something in the same document, save the bookmarked file under a different name, then reopen the active file and turn off tracking, insert the bookmarked passage from the copy, and delete it from its original location. Then turn the tracking on again, and you're back in business.

--------------------------------------

Karen Bojda responded to the same question:

Well, there's the workaround I learned about on CE-L, but for some reason I think you already know about this one 😉

https://listserv.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/wa-iub.exe?A2=ind0208E&L=copyediting-l&P=R613

"This is a known 'issue' (bug) in Word 97/98. It's been fixed in Word 2000 and higher. A workaround is to insert the text (Insert > File) into the new document rather than paste it. If you don't want to insert the whole doc, you can bookmark just the part you need and then enter the name of the bookmark into the 'Range' box of the Insert dialog."

I can confirm that this works in Word 98 on the Mac. You have to save a copy of the file under a different name, since Word won't let you insert a file (or even a bookmarked part of a file) into itself. It might be a cumbersome workaround, but I've used it and been grateful to know about it.

--------------------------------------

A more detailed explanation of how to do this is provided in the March 24 issue of Editorium Update:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1716395972

Many thanks to Hilary and Karen.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Copernic Desktop Search is a powerful (and free!) file indexing and search engine for Windows computers. The website says:

"Easily search your entire hard drive in less than a second to pinpoint the right file, e-mail, music or pictures.

"CDS brings the power of a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use search engine right to your PC and allows you instantly to search files, e-mails, and email attachments stored anywhere on your PC hard drive. It executes sub-second searching of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, Acrobat PDFs, and all popular music, picture and video formats. CDS also searches your browser history, favorites, and contacts."

http://www.copernic.com/index.html

Thanks to Keith Soltys for bringing this program to my attention. If you're a Mac user and know of a similar program for Macintosh, please let me know.

Indexing with Page Breaks from Quark

I started indexing a book yesterday, and I wanted to work on the text of the document in electronic form, with page breaks that matched those of the galleys, which had already been typeset in QuarkXPress. After a little experimentation, I figured out the following procedure:

1. Ask the typesetter to provide a postscript file, exported from QuarkXPress.

2. Open the postscript file using the free Ghostscript and GSview programs:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

3. In GSview, click Edit > Text Extract and save the resulting file to the desktop.

4. Open the file in Microsoft Word. Wow! All of the page breaks are exactly where they're supposed to be (inserted as manual page breaks). Of course, formatting has been lost (since this is a text file), but for pure indexing purposes that doesn't matter.

5. Click File > Page Setup > Layout and set paper size to 22 by 22 inches. Why? So Word won't insert any automatic page breaks and thus throw off pagination.

6. Insert a section break (Insert > Break > Odd page) between the book's front matter and chapters to prepare for step 7.

7. Put the cursor in the front matter, click Insert > Page Numbers, click the Format button, and specify a number format of lowercase Roman numeral. Also specify that page numbering should start at page i. Then click OK and click OK again.

8. Put the cursor in the first chapter, after the section break, click Insert > Page Numbers, click the Format button, and specify a number format of lowercase Arabic numbers. Also specify that page numbering should start at page 1. Then click OK and click OK again.

Now, when the cursor is in the front matter, the far left side of Word's status bar will display the correct page number in Roman numerals. When the cursor is in the chapters, the far left side of Word's status bar will display the correct page number in Arabic numbers. And when the index is generated, the page numbers will be Roman or Arabic as required.

After I was finished with all this, I began indexing with pleasure. Now you can too.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading the article on pasting tracked revisions (August 11 issue), Francelia Sevin wrote:

I tried this on my Mac with the same result. It seems Word 2001 doesn't support this feature. If you're a Mac user, gentle reader, and know a way around this problem, please let me know.

---------------------------------

William T. Buckley wrote:

"What practical use is there for Word's 'Bar' option in setting tab types. (Please, no jokes about my not knowing uses for a bar tab!) ;~) The option looks very handy if I could think of a use for it, but none comes to mind."

I responded:

To draw a vertical line through the text of your document. 🙂

I found this on Microsoft's site:

"When you set a bar tab stop, a vertical bar line appears where you set the tab stop (you don't need to press the TAB key). A bar tab is similar to strikethrough formatting, but it runs vertically through your paragraph at the location of the bar tab stop. Like other types of tabs, you can set a bar tab stop before or after you type the text of your paragraph."

What that means | is that you could have

some text like | this so you could, say,

compare lines of | poetry or other text.

How about listing foreign language equivalents?

Merci. | Thank you.

Je ne sais pas. | I don't know.

How about drawing T accounts for use in accounting, or for analyzing pros and cons?

_____________________

|
|

Honestly, until your message, I'd never even heard of this feature. 🙂

But maybe it could come in handy.

Many thanks to Francelia and William.

_________________________________________

RESOURCES

Microsoft has created an interesting set of multimedia Word tutorials called "So that's how! Great Word features." Learn about Word's new reading layout view, international characters and symbols, and much more:

http://tinyurl.com/44e2w