Track changes history

[Mr. Kotter]

Hi,

I consider myself a knowledgeable user of MS Word. Our organization
recently hired a trainer to teach beginner and advanced Word courses (I don't
know if the trainer is MOUSE or not). After these courses were taught, I held
a couple of technical workshops to teach staff how to work effectively using
our MS Word report templates. While I was teaching this course, we went over
tracked changes. I was told by the group I was teaching that our contracted
MS Word instructor advised the group that tracked changes can be revealed
even once the changes have all been accepted, the document saved and closed.

This doesn't seem right to me, so I contacted the instructor directly to
speak to him about this issue. I was told that there was some third party
software that could 'get under the hood' and do this.

I realize that there are ways to break a document's security, if so pursued.
But, I would like to know if the history of tracked changes forever stays in
the document or does it get purged once the changes are all accepted and the
document is saved and closed.

If anyone knows the answer to this, I would appreciate your response. I
would like to advise our organization with regards to this technical issue.

 

[Al]

Hi,

I consider myself a knowledgeable user of MS Word. Our organization
recently hired a trainer to teach beginner and advanced Word courses
(I don't know if the trainer is MOUSE or not). After these courses
were taught, I held a couple of technical workshops to teach staff how
to work effectively using our MS Word report templates. While I was
teaching this course, we went over tracked changes. I was told by the
group I was teaching that our contracted MS Word instructor advised
the group that tracked changes can be revealed even once the changes
have all been accepted, the document saved and closed.

This doesn't seem right to me, so I contacted the instructor directly
to speak to him about this issue. I was told that there was some third
party software that could 'get under the hood' and do this.

I realize that there are ways to break a document's security, if so
pursued. But, I would like to know if the history of tracked changes
forever stays in the document or does it get purged once the changes
are all accepted and the document is saved and closed.

If anyone knows the answer to this, I would appreciate your response.
I would like to advise our organization with regards to this technical
issue.

Years ago (probably 10) I documented this. I opened Word documents with
utility programs (one was Norton Commander the other was ... (I cannot
remember the name) and it revealed all kinds of things in the document that
could not be seen when opened with Word ( including changes). This was
many versions of Word previous to current versions so I do not know if it
is still true today. My recollection is that doing a 'Save as' rather than
a 'Save' cleaned up the document.

 

[Mr. Kotter]

Thank you, Al. That's very interesting.

I think I'll spend the $ and have a technical support person from Microsoft
answer as to whether this is still the case. I can't seem to find this
information online. If you happen across this information, please reply.