Track Changes - formatting notations

[Linda]

I am running Word 2002 on XP.

I receive documents with revisions all the time. When I open a file with
"Track Changes" turned on, every bulleted and numbered list is noted as being
changed/revised (by me or Unknown) as if the formatting was changed; however,
it was not changed by either myself ot the person sending me the file. This
happens ALL the time, EVERY time.

For example:
Formatted: Outline numbered + Level: 1 + Numbering Style: Bullet + Aligned
at: 0.25" + Tab after: 0.5" + Indent at: 0.5", Tabs: 0.5", Left

Any ideas as to why this is happening and/or how to not have this occur
would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

 

[Margaret Aldis]

I think there are two possibilities here.

Firstly, Word may really be reapplying the list formatting when you open the
file (even if it is the same in appearance). In your example the list
numbering is applied as direct formatting, which is well known for
misbehaviour - it sometimes actually changes appearance on different
machines. The best solution is to use styles for list formatting, but if you
don't have any control over the formatting in the documents you receive you
might find Word behaves better if you Reset all the panes in your Format >
Bullets & Numbering dialog, exit from Word, and try again. You might also
want to check whether the documents you are receiving have Tools > Templates
and Add-ins "Automatically Update Document Styles" checked - and ask the
sender to turn that off if it is on.

The second possibility is document corruption - "leakage" between list
formatting and revision marking seems sometimes to appear in corrupt
documents. You don't say whether these documents are all from the same
source - if they are it could be an indication of a corrupt Normal.dot
template or constant reuse of a corrupt "starter" document at the sender's
end.

For more information on list formatting using styles see Shauna Kelly's
site - e.g. :

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html

For more information about corrupt documents see

http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/CorruptDoc.htm

In a nutshell, I can't think there is going to be much you can do about this
your end apart from trying the Reset trick on B&N dialog, or simply
accepting all the list formatting changes. Educating the sender to start
clean, use styles, and never leave documents to "Automatically update"
should eradicate all problems though.

 

[Linda]

Margaret,


Thank you very much for your suggestions. I was beginning to think that
this problem/issue was "just me."

The documents that I originally send to be "revised" are generated from
RoboHelp files. Before I send these documents for review, I will make sure
that the style sheets are properly set. I believe this may be the root
problem. Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.

--
Linda
Technical Writer

I think there are two possibilities here.

Firstly, Word may really be reapplying the list formatting when you open the
file (even if it is the same in appearance). In your example the list
numbering is applied as direct formatting, which is well known for
misbehaviour - it sometimes actually changes appearance on different
machines. The best solution is to use styles for list formatting, but if you
don't have any control over the formatting in the documents you receive you
might find Word behaves better if you Reset all the panes in your Format >
Bullets & Numbering dialog, exit from Word, and try again. You might also
want to check whether the documents you are receiving have Tools > Templates
and Add-ins "Automatically Update Document Styles" checked - and ask the
sender to turn that off if it is on.

The second possibility is document corruption - "leakage" between list
formatting and revision marking seems sometimes to appear in corrupt
documents. You don't say whether these documents are all from the same
source - if they are it could be an indication of a corrupt Normal.dot
template or constant reuse of a corrupt "starter" document at the sender's
end.

For more information on list formatting using styles see Shauna Kelly's
site - e.g. :

http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/bullets/controlbullets.html

For more information about corrupt documents see

http://www.word.mvps.org/faqs/apperrors/CorruptDoc.htm

In a nutshell, I can't think there is going to be much you can do about this
your end apart from trying the Reset trick on B&N dialog, or simply
accepting all the list formatting changes. Educating the sender to start
clean, use styles, and never leave documents to "Automatically update"
should eradicate all problems though.