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.
