Word 2004 macro peculiarity (show and hide tracked changes)

[Matthew Stevens]

I've just upgraded to Word 2004 (OS X 10.4.5) from Word 98 (OS 9) and
have already started noticing annoyances. Here's the first (more to come).

I have a macro assigned to a keystroke (control-S) to show and hide
tracked changes. (I edit with tracking displayed, then review with
tracking hidden, often doing this hundreds of times in a document. A
keystroke is the only practical way to do this.)

The macro worked perfectly in Word 98. In Word 2004, it works for the
first few times (or minutes, not sure), then ceases working. The
document is left with tracking not visible. Going to the menu and
selecting "Tools: Track Changes: Highlight changes" and clicking on
"Highlight changes on screen" doesn't work - the changes remain hidden.

Any clues?

 

[Matthew Stevens]

I began my whinge with a description of weirdness in showing tracked
changes.

Daiya Mitchell responded:

Hmm. Similar odd behavior here. Unchecking the "highlight changes on screen"
vanished all changes, and I couldn't get them back (tried the same check,
tried View | Markup, tried using the Show menu on the Reviewing Toolbar).

Then I saved, closed, and reopened the doc, unchecked "highlight changes on
screen", and all methods above did work to show the changes. Huh. Then no
problems with a second test doc--now I'm wondering if it was a screen
refresh issue, where Word did change the state but didn't refresh the screen
to show it.

Not sure whether it is a screen refresh problem or not. I cannot select
"Highlight changes on screen" in "Tools: Track Changes: Highlight
changes" and make it stick - the selection vanishes when I close the
dialogue box. I suspect a bug in MS Word.

This suspicion is supported by the fix I've found - when the tracked
changes all go invisible and won't show again, I click on the TRK button
on the bottom bar once to turn tracking off, then click again to turn it
on again. Et voilà! The changes all show up again.

Do the bods from Microsoft read these forums and add these things to
their "must fix" list?

 

[Daiya Mitchell]

Did the suggestion of assigning a keyboard shortcut to ViewChanges bypass
the buggy behavior and get you the functionality you wanted? This group
likes doing theoretical investigation too, but it's good to know which this
is.

Can you reproduce this problem every time? because I couldn't. Only the
once. I was using new documents created in Word 2004 with some dummy text.
Does the document make a difference on your machine?

Do the bods from Microsoft read these forums and add these things to
their "must fix" list?

Yes, they do.

Daiya

 

[Matthew Stevens]

Did the suggestion of assigning a keyboard shortcut to ViewChanges bypass
the buggy behavior and get you the functionality you wanted? This group
likes doing theoretical investigation too, but it's good to know which this
is.

Yes, it did.

Can you reproduce this problem every time? because I couldn't. Only the
once. I was using new documents created in Word 2004 with some dummy text.
Does the document make a difference on your machine?

Yes, every time, every document.