Compare docs troubles

[Slipface]

Folks,
I've been using Word 2008 (v.12.1.5 currently) for a while now and with
a mix of .doc and .docx formats. I've used Track Changes with
colleagues without issue up until today.

I created a file, sent it to a colleague who edited it in Word/Windows
(using the older vers of windows and the plug-in or whatever it is to
work with .docx files).

When he returned it to me, I found that he did not use Track Changes,
so I ran a compare documents on it. And all hell broke loose.

The balloons showing the edits, as well as some comments I had inserted
in a previous version, were full size, but the text contained in the
balloons was microscopic in size. Seriously, just little tiny pixels,
at most.

So I opened the Reviewing pane. There too the text was microscopic.
But if I moved the font size slider in the formatting palette to a
larger size, the text in the Reviewing Pane grew to legible size.

However, there is some extra text in each line of the Reviewing Pane
that is still just pixel sized. I don't recall what they should be,
but maybe they are accept/reject options. One is on the very left hand
side and one on the right.

Oh, and the text in the balloons remained illegible.

If I click on text in the reviewing pane it will take me to the
associated balloon and bold the line to the text. If I click or
double-click on a balloon, it does NOT highlight the associate item in
the reviewing pane, like I believe it should. It does jump to it, but
I don't know which one in the list is actually relevant.

Also, there are about 15 balloons clumped up at the very beginning of
the document. They're a bunch of style definitions. I chalk this up
to the Windows machine throwing in a bunch of needless junk. I tried
to highlight the first few lines and click the reject button in the
toolbar but it didn't work. So I started reject them one by one,
clicking the X button in each balloon, when i got to one that caused
Word to freeze (spinning beach ball), and I had to force quit. I was
able to replicate this a good half dozen times in a row. I'm leaving
it alone now and not sure what I'm going to to about it later. I'm
saving frequently, and if I have to, at the end, I guess I can just
copy all of the text out into a new document and hope that one monster
of an edit doesn't go with it.

Any suggestions? Words of comfort?

TIA,
Dennis

 

[Slipface]

I've since discovered that the one balloon that causes Word to hang
says "Balloon text char: Font:1 pt"

This would explain why the text is invisible to the naked eye. It does
not, however, explain how to fix it, or why it causes Word to hang
reliably when I either accept or reject it.

Dennis

 

[Slipface]

If I blow up the zoom to 500%, I still cannot read the text in the
balloons, but I can select it. The styles section of the formatting
palette shows "Comment Text" for the style. I went into the Edit style
section for that one, and it showed it as Normal + 10 pt. Changing the
size made no difference in the balloon text.

Grr.

Oh I also copied everything into a new doc and that one impossible
track-change that caused Word to hang did not go with it. One down,
one to go. All that remains now are my comments, which still look fine
when in the "before-it-was-edited-on-a-Windows-machine" version. So
it's not my computer but definitely something that happened in the
course of sending it to my Windows colleague, and back.

Dennis

 

[Slipface]

Replying to myself again, I copied the entire doc again to a new blank
doc, but this time omitted the last paragraph marker. Now my comments
are back to normal, legible text. Hallelujah.

However, I'd still really like to know how to fix this if (and when) it
happens again. I swap docs with my colleague all the time, and I
really don't want to have to do this every time I have comments or
track changes/compare docs in them.

Dennis

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Dennis:

By talking to yourself, at least you are guaranteed an intelligent answer,
right?

I would never attempt a Compare Documents on a document that already
contains markup. Particularly not if it has been round-tripped through the
old format on a different platform. It's asking for trouble.

Doing a Maggie (all but last paragraph) is the fix. It's not the last
paragraph we are worried about, it's the Document Defaults that sit in the
default section break out of site below the last paragraph.

You were unable to change the Comment Text style because the style table
(which is among the Document Defaults, in that last section break) had
corrupted. When the Default Property Store corrupts, it often goes
read-only, preventing you making the change.

Had you wanted only that one comment, you could have copied it, then pasted
it as Unformatted Text into another document. It would then have been
readable.

Hope this helps

Replying to myself again, I copied the entire doc again to a new blank
doc, but this time omitted the last paragraph marker. Now my comments
are back to normal, legible text. Hallelujah.

However, I'd still really like to know how to fix this if (and when) it
happens again. I swap docs with my colleague all the time, and I
really don't want to have to do this every time I have comments or
track changes/compare docs in them.

Dennis

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]

 

[Slipface]

Hi Dennis:

By talking to yourself, at least you are guaranteed an intelligent answer,
right?

Heh

I would never attempt a Compare Documents on a document that already
contains markup. Particularly not if it has been round-tripped through the
old format on a different platform. It's asking for trouble.

It was never actually saved down into a doc format, so far as I know,
but it was being translated on the fly by whatever plug-in is running
on my colleague's old version of Windoze Word, so I suppose that could
be monkeying with things.

Thanks for the rest of your comments

Dennis

 

[John McGhie]

Hi Dennis:

Yes: the Import/Export converter converts the document into the native
format of the version of Word that reads it, then exports back out from that
format on Save.

It has to, because Word unpacks the document into a binary structure in
memory so it can work on it.

So the document did round-trip into binary and back to XML.

The converter is very good, but there is some wear-and-tear involved.

Cheers

Heh



It was never actually saved down into a doc format, so far as I know,
but it was being translated on the fly by whatever plug-in is running
on my colleague's old version of Windoze Word, so I suppose that could
be monkeying with things.

Thanks for the rest of your comments

Dennis

--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/

Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:[email protected]