tracked changes, ok to use?

[Chip Orange]

We're new to Word 2002 and are wondering if it's generally considered safe
to use the tracked changes feature?

thanks.

Chip

 

[Shauna Kelly]

Hi Chip

It depends on what you mean by "safe". Your lawyers, for example, might
consider distributing documents that contain tracked changes to be "unsafe".
For this week's publicly embarrassing example, see
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5170073.html.

That story tells a salutory lesson, though most of what that document says
about Tracked Changes is wrong. Tracked changes are not "invisible
electronic ink", they're not metadata (that is, they're not data about data,
though Word does store metadata about tracked changes such as the name of
the author who made the change), they're not typically invisible to someone
reading a Word document (for otherwise, what would be the point<g>?), and
they're not the same thing as "hidden text".

To guard against distributing documents containing tracked changes, with
Word 2002 or 2003, make sure you have ticked the box at Tools > Options >
Security > "Warn before printing, saving, or sending a file that contains
tracked changes or comments".

If your office is really concerned about security if personal information in
documents, you can use the new "Remove Hidden Data" tool available at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ED-D43E-42CA-BC7B-5446D34E5360&displaylang=en,
but be aware of the issues given at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;834636. There's also
info about removing metadata at
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=290945.

Technically, I'm not aware of anything that makes using Tracked Changes
unsafe. For example, I've never heard that they cause document corruption.
The only annoying thing is that if you have a document with SEQ fields (eg
figure captions), the numbering *appears* to go wrong if you delete a
caption while tracking changes. So if you delete, say, Figure 3 while
tracking changes, your numbering will go 1, 2, 4, 5 until you either accept
or reject the deletion of Figure 3. When you stop to think about it, this
behaviour is quite sensible; but it can be confusing when you first see it
and can't work out why the caption numbering has gone awry. This doesn't
affect paragraph numbering; it only affects field numbering such as SEQ
fields.

Hope this helps.

Shauna Kelly. Microsoft MVP.
http://www.shaunakelly.com/word

 

[Chip Orange]

Thank you. We will be using the RHD tool as you suggest, we wanted to know
if like the master document feature, or the versions feature, we might be at
a higher risk of corruption of documents if we used tracked changes.

Chip

 

[Robert M. Franz (RMF)]

Hi Shauna

I agree with everything you say but one little bit:

Tracked changes are not [..]
metadata (that is, they're not data about data, though Word does

store metadata about tracked changes such as the name of

the author who made the change),

When you see a paragraph as the data, and "Tracked changes" telling you
which author worte/corrected that paragraph, that could be seen as
metadata IMHO.


[..]

Technically, I'm not aware of anything that makes using Tracked Changes
unsafe. For example, I've never heard that they cause document corruption. [..]

We're new to Word 2002 and are wondering if it's generally considered safe
to use the tracked changes feature?

We've had troubles with t/c before, but only when used BETWEEN different
versions of Word (and of course, usually in documents where we had no
control about how folks have been dealing with before they reached our
house), but I've never heard about troubles when dealing with it solely
in Word 2002 (or 2000).

2cents
..bob
...Word-MVP