Compare and Merge – Legal Black Line - Word XP

[Mary Ann]

I have an original document and an edited document, created by a Save As on
the original – the edited document has a different name.

I want to show only what has changed and Word Help indicates I could do this
with the Legal Blackline option in Compare and Merge. However, when I use
this I get the whole document showing, not just the changed parts. So the
result is the same as Compare and Merge to New Document.

How do I do this so that I get the result I need?

I am using Word XP

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi MaryAnn,

I have an original document and an edited document, created by a Save As on
the original – the edited document has a different name.

I want to show only what has changed and Word Help indicates I could do this
with the Legal Blackline option in Compare and Merge. However, when I use
this I get the whole document showing, not just the changed parts. So the
result is the same as Compare and Merge to New Document.

How do I do this so that I get the result I need?

I am using Word XP

I'm afraid no version of Word supports exactly what you describe you want to
do. You've misinterpreted what the Help topic means to say (admittedly, it's
very poorly written, or perhaps the author misunderstood what the developers
did). What Legal Blackline does is generate a third document, with differences
between the two documents you're comparing displayed as change tracking. But it
doesn't pull out ONLY the text that's been changed. In a general way, that
wouldn't be very helpful... Just imagine: if someone changed the capitalization
of a single word, all you'd get is the first letter of the word - no context or
anything.

Compare and Merge actually *changes* one of the documents to reflect how it
differs from the other.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Mary Ann]

Thanks Cindy

Hi MaryAnn,

I'm afraid no version of Word supports exactly what you describe you want to
do. You've misinterpreted what the Help topic means to say (admittedly, it's
very poorly written, or perhaps the author misunderstood what the developers
did). What Legal Blackline does is generate a third document, with differences
between the two documents you're comparing displayed as change tracking. But it
doesn't pull out ONLY the text that's been changed. In a general way, that
wouldn't be very helpful... Just imagine: if someone changed the capitalization
of a single word, all you'd get is the first letter of the word - no context or
anything.

Compare and Merge actually *changes* one of the documents to reflect how it
differs from the other.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)


This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail