Distinguishing characters from template

[Tom Grant]

Hello everybody,

I am stuck on this problem and I need some fresh ideas. Hopefully someone
can help.

I have a template, let's call it template A. I also have a document, let's
call it document B, which is created from template A.

Document B was created by deleting some of the characters in template A and
then adding some new text.

I need to be able to determine programatically which characters in document
B were originally from template A.

Is there a way to mark template characters in such a way that this
distinguishing information would be available in a document based on the
template?

The solution can be either through the template itself, or through code that
runs while document B is being created. Either way.

Any ideas?

Tom Grant

 

[Tom Grant]

That sounds like a good start. Thank you.

Now I need to find a way to prevent the authors of the document from turning
off Tracking. Otherwise, this method is a no go.

Thanks again.

Tom

 

[Tom Grant]

Thanks again. This is going to work great. I looked into "Protect
Document" and I can password protect "Tracking". This way the editors of
the document can not turn tracking off, accept, or reject changes.

 

[Mark Tangard]

Tom,

This is a useful capability, but be aware that it doesn't prevent
someone from disabling/enabling the *display* of tracked changes.
This is a recurring problem with some of the novices at my firm,
who aren't comfortable with the Accept/Reject dialog but who have
figured out that they can make the icky marks go away by unchecking
'Highlight changes on screen.' Typically this isn't discovered
until some time later when someone else tries to edit the document
and observes weird behavior attributable to the now-hidden changes.

 

[Mark Tangard]

On second thought, that would only make changes visible at open.
To disable the menu item you'd have to write a null or rejecting
macro with the same name as the commnand. However, I don't see
that specific command, or anything like it, in the command list.
Dead end, maybe.