Comments/Track Changes unwielldy

[kokodyeut]

I use Track Changes and Comments a lot, but the way these are now handled by
Word seems suitable only when there aren't that many comments/changes.

The balloons become impossible to follow when they start to mount up, and
the other option, displaying comments/changes in the text is a mess. The tiny
Comments brackets can be hard to spot, and are very difficult to work with.
The Comments pane used to list the comments in one simple window, by
reviewer, now it's broken into comments and changes to different parts of the
doc, and each comment has its own little heading reiterating the name of the
reviewer - so it's a lot bulkier. And when you want to go through the
comments one by one and respond to them, the cursor doesn't find the comment
marker in the text when you click on the comment in its pane; neither does
Word find the comment in its pane when you click on the comment marker in the
text.

All in all, the old Word method of highlighting where comments were in the
text, with the comments appearing when the cursor floated over the text, was
far clearer, if imperfect. So was the comments pane with only comments in it.
It could be refined a bit, maybe with the user given the possibility of
selecting the highlight color or other highlighting method (sparkles, colored
text, underline ...).

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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, you still get comments in ScreenTips if you view the document in
Normal view. When you have a lot of comments or tracked changes, increasing
the balloon area width will help. I agree that the options for printing out
specific parts of the markup (just comments, for example) are cripplingly
limited.

I use Track Changes and Comments a lot, but the way these are now handled by
Word seems suitable only when there aren't that many comments/changes.

The balloons become impossible to follow when they start to mount up, and
the other option, displaying comments/changes in the text is a mess. The tiny
Comments brackets can be hard to spot, and are very difficult to work with.
The Comments pane used to list the comments in one simple window, by
reviewer, now it's broken into comments and changes to different parts of the
doc, and each comment has its own little heading reiterating the name of the
reviewer - so it's a lot bulkier. And when you want to go through the
comments one by one and respond to them, the cursor doesn't find the comment
marker in the text when you click on the comment in its pane; neither does
Word find the comment in its pane when you click on the comment marker in the
text.

All in all, the old Word method of highlighting where comments were in the
text, with the comments appearing when the cursor floated over the text, was
far clearer, if imperfect. So was the comments pane with only comments in it.
It could be refined a bit, maybe with the user given the possibility of
selecting the highlight color or other highlighting method (sparkles, colored
text, underline ...).

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...8ae6e3&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[kokodyeut]

Thanks, but the problem is that I work with long docs with LOTS of tracked
changes. Making the bubbles two feet wide might help. I don't have any
problems with printing out comments. I rarely want to and I can get around it
if i do.

A lot of people are frustrated with Word's Comments function, I've seen a
great number of discussions of it in editorial groups, for example. You can
set Word to show only comments, and use bubbles, and they are elegant. But
even when you use these functions all the time, the complex combo of
selecting bubbles or not in Tools/Options or Preferences (Mac), toggling
views around through the Reviewing Toolbar and again in Tools/Track Changes
can be confusing or at least time-consuming.

I'd like to be able to show /hide tracked changes in the text with
strikethrough and colors, as I can still do. BUT, as well, I'd like to be
able to have a simple list of comments in a pane of their own, which I can
work through and respond to and know which I have yet to answer etc. So I can
click on the 3rd comment in the list, bounce to it in the text, respond to
it, then move to another. I don't want to have to search through a long
paper, or a long list of comments and other changes, to see which comments I
have yet to respond to or which I've flagged for someone else's attention.

 

[MikeDb]

This is exactly the issue I have:
- Comments and changes are NOT the same thing (but Microsoft seem to think
they are).
- There appears to be no way to select to see only one type of item in the
reviewing pane.
- There appears to be no way to change the layout of the reviewiong pane to
get rid of all the wasted (vertical) space. We don't all have 30 inch
monitors
- The presentation, whilst pretty, does not make for efficient working.

Also:
- The "next change" button in 2003 finds comments as well as tracked changes
(in 2000 it only finds changes, which is perfect).


I was hoping to find a post that identified how to configure these features
so that
A) Reviewing Pane presents information more-concisely
B) Reviewing pane displays only the type of item I am interested in at the
time (comments, tracked changes, etc)
C) "Next Change" button finds only tracked changes and not comments.