Tracking Trick

If you've done much editing in Microsoft Word, you've probably used Track Changes (Revisions), which marks deleted and added text so you can review (or let someone else review) your editing. If you haven't used it, here's how to turn it on:

1. Click the "Tools" menu.

2. Click "Track Changes."

3. Click "Highlight Changes."

4. Put a check in the box labeled "Track changes while editing." (While you're there, you can also decide whether or not to show ["highlight"] changes on your screen or in the printed document.)

5. Click the "OK" button.

Or, what the heck, just double-click the "TRK" box in the status bar at the bottom of your screen. You can also right-click the box to set various options.

One of the options is what color to use to designate deletions and additions--blue, turquoise, and so on (scroll down to see the more unusual colors). The most interesting color is the one labeled "By author." What's it do? Well, my own "author" color, by default, is red. If, however, I open a document from you, your tracked changes will show up in a different color, probably blue. So "By author" tells word to assign a different color to changes from a different user. How does Word know the document is from a different user? Because of the name that was specified under Tools > Options > User Information > Name when the document was created.

And that suggests an interesting trick. If you're going to track changes, why not track different *kinds* of changes in a way that will be helpful to you? The most obvious application of this idea would be to track big changes (such as moving paragraphs around) and small changes (such as moving commas around) separately. All you have to do is change the name under User Information to something like "Big Changes" before getting out the cleaver, and to something like "Little Changes" before getting out the tweezers. The obvious advantage of this is that little changes then show up in a different color *inside* of big changes, which doesn't happen if you make all of your changes using the same user name (and thus the same color).

You can even record each name change in its own macro and assign those macros to menus, toolbar buttons, or keyboard shortcuts for easy access. You can learn more about doing so here:

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706651129

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707286867

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707444986

http://www.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1707100224

(Reader's Write column)

After you've finished marking big and little changes (or whatever), don't forget to set your user name back to your actual name.

Now, there are plenty of changes you probably don't want to track at all. For example, before I ever start reading a document, I first clean up multiple spaces, multiple paragraph breaks, and lots of other stuff that gets in the way of real editing. I do this with Track Changes turned off (using our FileCleaner and MegaReplacer programs) because I don't consider these to be significant changes. I don't want to review them, and I don't think my authors care about reviewing them. I do, however, want to have any significant changes available for review, and the tracking trick of changing the user name makes this eminently doable.

You can learn about FileCleaner here:

http://www.editorium.com/14845.htm

And you can learn about MegaReplacer here:

http://www.editorium.com/14843.htm

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READERS WRITE

After reading about using background colors in last week's newsletter, Chuck Tucker (ctucker@ieee.org) wrote:

I don't know about your version of Word, but background colors (other than white on blue) only work in Normal view. They go away when you switch back to Print View.

I have a couple of other observations.

1. When I switch to Normal view with ToolsOptionsView Style Area Width set greater than zero I get the usual display of styles along the left margin.

2. When I set a new background color in the Normal view the styles in the margin disappear (Area Width = 0)??

3. Switching back to Print Layout view gets rid of the background.

4. Switching back to Normal view omits the background color and returns the Styles in the margin.

Go figure?

However, if you simply use the standard "white on blue background" option, then the Styles margin display remains when switching back and forth.

Thanks to Chuck for sending these "gotchas."

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RESOURCES

The Microsoft Office "Tools on the Web" site offers some terrific instruction on using the Track Changes feature:

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/legal/track%20changes.asp