The unaccept changes after they've been accepted & saved bug

[polihymnia]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel Hello,

For nearly two years, I've been putting up with this VERY FRUSTRATING bug in Word 2008 for Mac. I'm a professional editor, so I use track changes extensively. I accept or reject changes one by one or in blocks of selected text. In every project, what inevitably happens is that somehow changes I've already ACCEPTED and SAVED suddenly appear as UNACCEPTED; that is, where the markup was already cleaned up, old proposed changes REAPPEAR. Why in the world has this bug not been fixed??????? Time is money, and I have to redo work that was already done because of this bug in your program.

 

[polihymnia]

I should also add that the problem mostly appears in either numbered or bulleted lists.

 

[polihymnia]

Sometimes when I click off the document in another program and then click back in Word, the change that reappeared then disappears. This tells me that Microsoft still hasn't fixed the other major bug in Word for Mac 2008, which is a huge problem with the WYSIWYG interface. I've noticed that when you're too near the bottom or top of a page (in print layout), you get the problem of hidden text; that is, you won't see text properly continued from the bottom of one page to the top of the next; it appears that there's text missing. So the workaround is you have to move your cursor and the slider up and down and re-click in the document before the WYSIWYG interface properly shows the text.

Now the other major flaw in this program is that those of us who choose NOT to see comments in those stupid balloons, but prefer to see them in a viewing pane at the bottom of the page, are stuck deleting parts of comments only character by character; that is, you can't double-click on a word and drag to select the text, and hit delete within a comment. Nor can you select a part of a comment and insert text over it. Instead if you want to delete part of a comment in the viewing pane, you have to do so character by character. This program is terrible in comparison to the last good version of Word for Mac, which was Word for Mac 2001.

 

[John McGhie]

Hmmm... I have been doing professional editing in Word for 20 years, and I
have never seen this condition. Not ever!

You are aware that Word has a new setting: "Keep Track of Formatting"?

I have not tested this, but I believe that if you change the formatting of a
paragraph, and then subsequently change the text, that's two changes.

If you then accept one change, you will accept the first change but not the
second.

I never track changes to formatting, so I can't be sure: you could test it.

One of the reasons for the change to .docx file format was that the old
binary format .doc was not robust enough to cope with the level of change
tracking that was being used. If you are using .doc, you should expect
Track Changes to be unstable: .docx was the fix.

I agree with you that Track Changes should be smart enough to ignore changes
to bullets and numbering. I believe it is, if you turn off "Keep track of
formatting."

I also agree that Word 2008 was never ready for release when it went on
sale, but they ran out of time, money, and people. We would have had to
wait another year for Word 2008. I am in the camp that believes we should
have: but under pressure from Apple (among others) Microsoft made a
different decision.

I have high hopes for the next version

Cheers

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Processor: Intel
Hello,

For nearly two years, I've been putting up with this VERY FRUSTRATING bug in
Word 2008 for Mac. I'm a professional editor, so I use track changes
extensively. I accept or reject changes one by one or in blocks of selected
text. In every project, what inevitably happens is that somehow changes I've
already ACCEPTED and SAVED suddenly appear as UNACCEPTED; that is, where the
markup was already cleaned up, old proposed changes REAPPEAR. Why in the world
has this bug not been fixed??????? Time is money, and I have to redo work that
was already done because of this bug in your program.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

--

John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:[email protected]

 

[Track Changes Failed Me Too]

Well, I just had the same problem today. I accepted all changes, saved the
document, opened the document, checked for changes (there were none) emailed
the document and the recipient said the changes weren't accepted.

 

[John McGhie]

I suspect your recipient is not being accurate in their comments.

"Accept All Changes in Document" reliably does what it says on the can.

But if you do not use that specific command, there are some scenarios where
you might miss accepting a change.

Cheers

Well, I just had the same problem today. I accepted all changes, saved the
document, opened the document, checked for changes (there were none) emailed
the document and the recipient said the changes weren't accepted.

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!