Document Revision Indication

[John Gregory]

I posted this question before, but it was not resolved:

I am in charge of compiling edited specification document sections that were
modified originally with track changes into a large final document. Once the
changes have been reviewed accepted or rejected, the document revision is
finalized. However, in the final distributed document, we need to indicate
where the revisions have been made so that the users of the document are able
to easily identify the changes. This is normally done with a vertical bar
adjacent to the change.

My question is: is there any way to accept the changes, and leave the
vertical bar in place to indicate where the change was made?

The document is several hundred pages, so I would like to have an automated
way to perform this task.

Windows XP, Word 2003

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Not unless you use a macro. The vertical bars that indicate revisions are
tied to the track changes feature. Once you accept the changes, the bars go
away--that's what most users want and expect.

Yours is an unusual situation. You could write a macro that locates each
revision (prior to accepting the changes) and inserts a bar to the left of
the changed paragraph (using paragraph border formatting rather than relying
on the tracking feature). Then, when the changes are accepted, the bars
would not go away.

 

[John Gregory]

That sounds like what I need, however I am not that good with writing macros.
I created a simple macro that finds the next change, and puts in the line,
however I have to execute it for each change. Is there an easy way to
perform this for all changes?

 

[PamC via OfficeKB.com]

If your final is to be distributed in print or as a pdf, you can try this:
In the track changes options,
set insertions markup to none, set the deletions markup to hidden, and set
balloons to never. Set the change lines to your preference.

You could distribute it in Word and either send instructions so readers
could set up their computers the same way or include a macro that would set
the revision viewing options for them.

PamC

 

[John Gregory]

Thank you and Herb both for your responses. I will try both to see which is
the easiest to use and most reliable.