microsoft word
Is there a way to generate an attractive summary of tracked changes in a word document?
If I'm working on a ~100 page document and, say, I change two paragraphs on p.37 and update a table on p.74, is there a way to produce a Word document showing just the changed pages?
Perhaps something like the summary / diff available in some wikis (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stack_Exchange_Network&action=historysubmit&diff=461134938&oldid=458998783)
I had the same problem. I found it was due to IntegriSign.dot, an electronic signiture pad. Once uninstalled, problem finally stopped. It would also change the date on the file from its creation date to today's date, which messes up my ability to find files by date.
I don't think there is going to be an easy way to achieve this layout, but I hope someone will think of a simpler approach…
I can think of two main approaches that you could take. I am assuming for the moment that there are no other headers/footers in the document. I have posted a document showing how Approach two would work at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ngrhc8yds0umnoj/template_lorumipsum_mod1.docx
It would probably be better to look at that an see if it is even close to what you need before reading any further.
Approach one would I think require some VBA macros to make it work. What you would do is
In that case, the main table column headings would always be above the "section headings", there would be no "cont." texts (although you may be able to fix that using a kludge), and you would have to deal with the fact that the column headings are separate from the data. That means two things:
Approach two would be to keep the table layout you have, but use some Word field codes to insert a heading on each page.
I don't think the suggestion I made earlier to use { STYLEREF } fields is going to work, because they do not really provide continuation headers (for example, a STYLEREF field will typically display the text of the first header on the page, not the text of the header that is being continued).
The only way I know how to do this is to use some unusual SEQ fields to keep track of the section headers and to decide what should be displayed in each page header. To make this work, your users will have to be able to work with field codes (unfortunately, they look complicated and are rather easy to break). Also, Word works quite hard to keep its headers and footers up to date, and can sometimes get a bit confused when there are lots of fields with page-dependent values in those areas. So this tends not to work so well when a document gets larger - I'd check and see whether it works for your document type and size.
The specific approach I describe here makes some assumptions about what you want at the top of each page:
The document I posted has samples of the fields you need. For each section heading the user would need to insert two table rows containing a number of fields. That is completely impractical unless the user has a mechanism that allows them to do that easily. For example, if they set up the two rows as an formatted autocorrect entry called “seched”, then all they need do is type
seched
followed by a space
at the beginning of a table row, and the two rows would be included. There are other possibilities.
What I envisage is that your starting Word document would have (at least) the first (heading) row of the table, and the first section header, i.e. “Front Pages” in your sample document. a two-row block at the beginning of each subsequent section header. Ideally, the user would be able to insert the entire block, fields and all, using an autocorrect or perhaps a building block. They would then need to modify the text in the fields. If something like that is not feasible in your environment, this approach isn’t going to be practical either.
The key concepts for using fields in this situation are as follows: a. a field has a code and a result b. some samples of field codes are:
{ SEQ S \c }
{ PAGE }
{ SET T “some text” }
{ REF T }
c. The { } are special field code brace pairs that you can insert on Windows versions of Word using ctrl-F9. You can’t just type them usin gthe ordinary { and } characters on the keyboard d. You can toggle between “field codes” and “field results” view using Alt-F9
The results of the above four fields might be something like
4
2
(a SET field does not show a result. it just sets the value of a bookmark, in this case the bookmark “T”)
some text
e. Many field types do not update themselves. To see the correct results, you have to select them and press F9. Often, the simplest way to do this is to select the whole document using ctrl-A, then press F9. (going into Print Preview and out again is often suggested as an option, but in fact it does not update all field types). You may need to do this when, for example, your document’s pagination has changed. For this document type, what the user should really do is
with the insertion point in the body of the document, use ctrl-A, then F9
f. You can nest field codes in certain ways, for example the result of
{ IF { SEQ S \c } = 0 "S is zero' "S is not zero" }
should be “S is zero” when the current value of the SEQuence variable S is 0 and you have just updated all the fields. In this case, both pairs of { } need to be the “special field code braces”
g. In a document header or footer, the values of fields are generally equal to the value of the field as it would be if it were placed at the end of the body text in the page, not at the beginning of the page. SO we have to find a way to decide what a value is at the beginning of the page.
The method I propose uses the following fields:
In the first cell of the table heading, there are two fields:
{ SET T1 "" } (sets the bookmark T1 to an empty string)
{ SEQ S \r1 \h } (sets the sequence variable S to 1, hides the result)
Each section heading has the following fields, except that you replace the text in the { SET T } field by the heading text for that heading
{ SEQ S \h }{ SET T "Front pages" }{ T }{ SET "T{ SEQ S \c }" "...(cont.): { T }" }{ SEQ "P{ PAGE \#0 }N{ SEQ "P{ PAGE \#0 }" }" \r1 \h }
{ SEQ S \h } increases the value of S by 1 (in section 1, S will be 2) and the \h hides the result
{ SET T "Front pages" } sets bookmark T to “Front pages”.
{ T } (an abbreviation for { REF T } displays the value of bookmark T
{ SET "T{ SEQ S \c }" … } . In section 1, this will set the value of T2. In Section 2, it will set the value of T3, and so on. We set T2, T3 etc. to the text we want for the continuation notice in the page header. So you can either re-use the value of { T } and prepend "... (cont.): " to it, as I have done above, or you can write a completely different continuation text for each section. Again, that might require the user to modify the row height so they can see all the text in all the fields.
{ SEQ S \c } is the current value of sequence variable S.
{ SEQ "P{ PAGE \#0 }N{ SEQ "P{ PAGE \#0 }" \r1 \h } sets the value of a sequence variable that is named according to the page number it is on and the number of such fields there are on the page.
(This assumes that you are using straightforward numbering (1,2,3,4,5,etc.) you are not using chapter-page numbering (A-1,A-2 etc.) if you have more than one Word section in the document, the numbering is continuous, e.g. does not start again at 1 for each section.
If you are using A,B,C etc. rather than 1,2,3 the \# switch should return 1,2,3. But with chapter-page numbering, this would only work if the page number was unique, e.g. A-1,A-2,B-3,B-4 etc. rather than A-1, A-2, B-1, B-2 etc.
)
So for example, on page 2, the first field set up in this way will set the value of the sequence variable S2N1. The second will set the value of S2N2. I refer to this series of sequence variables as “marker variables”
Above every heading row except the first, we also need a one-cell row which we will make as thin as possible (vertically) and which contains the following field codes:
{ SEQ "P{ PAGE \#0 }N{ SEQ "P{ PAGE \#0 }" }" \r{ SEQ S \c } \h }
this sets the marker variable to the section number variable S.
Finally, in the header (it can be all the headers or you can use a different first page header), you put
{ IF { SEQ "P{ PAGE \#0 }N1" \c } = 0 "{ "T{ SEQ S \c }" }" "{ "T{ SEQ "P{ PAGE }N1" \c }" }" }
What this says is
If the first marker on the page has value 0 Then
display the continuation text for the section that is current at the end of
the page
Else
display the continuation text for the section number stored in the first marker on the page
End If
When we set a marker, we always set its value either to 1 or the current section number. So the marker value will only ever be 0 on a page which has no markers, in which case the section current at the end of the page is the same as the section current at the beginning of the page.
If the first marker on the page is set to 1, it is a start-of-section marker and there is no earlier end-of-section marker on the page. That means we have a section heading at the top of the page, so we display T1, i.e. a blank text.
Otherwise, the first marker on the page is an end-of-section marker and that means that we need to display the continuation text for the section recorded in the marker.
There is one possibility that I have not investigated in this case, and that is that the thin row containing the end-of-section marker is the first row on a page. I am not sure whether that can be avoided and it may not be easy to detect that situation, either. I think if it occurs, the only solution will be to reduce the height of the previous cell until the blank cell moves up a page.
Best Answer
Yes. There is a way to do it, but it appears VBA coding is needed to be able to generate a document with all the changes listed. Here is an MVP site with some ready to use Macros. VBA for Word - Macro
Alternately, if you want to print the changes, here is a link for that. Print List of Changes