Comparing Documents in Word 2003 and Word 2002 - VERY Weird Proble

[Joshua Gray]

I am having a very strange problem that hopefully you will be able to shed
some light on. This problem is affecting multiple users using Word 2002 w/
SP3.

If they compare an edited document to an original using "Compare and Merge
Documents..." they will see very odd and pointless redlining being done. For
example, if they added one word to a paragraph, it will say that they deleted
the entire paragraph and reinserted it directly below it. Keep in mind that
both the original and edited version where created in the same version of
Word 2002.

However, when I use Word 2003 w/ SP1 to compare the exact same documents, it
shows that only the one word that was added was actually inserted, not the
entire paragraph.

I have tried to remove/reinstall Word on their PC's, but the problem
repeatedly occurs. Do you have any other suggestions??

THanks,
Josh.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Document comparison has and remains an iffy proposition with Word. They keep
making improvements. It looks like you found one.
http://addbalance.com/usersguide/track_changes.htm

 

[Joshua Gray]

So you are basically saying that is an inherent problem in Word and the only
thing I can do is upgrade all my users to Word 2003? That doesn't seem very
logical to me...

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Not sure how you define logical. It didn't work well in Word 2002. MS made
changes to make the product better, including comparison that works better
in the Word 2003 upgrade. Having to get the new, fixed, product to get the
benefits meets my definition of logical.

I'll be surprised if you find a way to make Word 2002 work like Word 2003
without upgrading but am open to suggestions.

I didn't spend a lot of time with Word 2002 (XP) and am using Word 2003.
Track changes was broken in Word 97 and bad enough in Word 2000 that
Microsoft still recommended third-party solutions. If I run into trouble I
still would convert one or both documents to text-only files and run the
comparison on those. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. The link I gave
you is to a page on how to best use the track changes features in Word
including document comparison. It was written for Word 97/2000 but is still
useful.

 

[Joshua Gray]

Well, upgrading all of my users to Word 2003 for one feature to work
correctly does not sound very logical to me. Logical would be for Microsoft
to fix the known problem in one of the first 3 service packs that were
released for Word 2002.

Thanks for your help and insight though.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

I guess we do assign different meanings to the word "logical." As I said,
compare docs has been problematic at least since Word 97. To me the surprise
is that it works as well as it does in Word 2003. BTW, tables also work
better than they did in Word 97; and those new task panes are kind of neat.
Why not just issue a big service pack for Word 97 to fix it?