2003 (Track Changes Problem)

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One of our users has a large number of word documents (approx. 100) that have revisions made to them and track changes still enabled. I am unable to accept the revisions (greyed out) or turn off track changes in any of these documents. I replaced her normal.dot file which now enables new documents to use track changes properly. Is there anything that can be done for these old documents? I am able to copy and paste the information into a new document and it pastes with the revisions accepted and no revision marks but that is a bit of an onerous job considering the number of documents that she has. Could all these old documents be corrupt or is that reaching a bit?

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Check whether the documents have been protected for tracked changes. Does the Tools menu contain ‘Unprotect document’ instead of ‘Protect document’?

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Thanks Hans. Yes, I did check to see if any of them were protected and they are not. I also thought maybe they were really old documents that had lived through too many versions but that’s not the case. The oldest document is from about 2003.

At this point, the user is going to do the copy/paste thing as she uses each document but I just wondered if anyone else had seen this sort of behaviour before.

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If you can capture all of the documents into one folder or branch of folders with nothing else sharing the same folder(s), a small macro should do the trick fairly quickly. If you can identify the top folder, and any filename exceptions, I will put the code together for you. Please confirm whether all extensions are “.doc”, or identify what others are included.

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Thank you Don. I’ll check with this person when I see her on Tuesday if this would be of assistance to her. I know her files are in a very large folder along with others so she would need to move them to a temporary folder…I’ll be back to you with your kind offer.

Deb

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Hi Deb
Here’s the approach I would implement.

'########################################################################
'# Saved as: H:WoodyTrack Changes ProblemTrack Changes Problem       #
'# Approach.doc                                                         #
'#                                                                      #
'# Purpose:  Copy individual documents into new blank documents and     #
'# save the new document with the original file's filename.  Reference  #
'# Lounge Post: 596,285                                                 #
'#                                                                      #
'# #################################################################### #
'# Arguments: none                                                      #
'#                                                                      #
'# #################################################################### #
'# Entry Conditions:  Known path and filename parameters                #
'#                                                                      #
'# #################################################################### #
'# Exit Conditions:                                                     #
'#                                                                      #
'#  a.  Original files (FOIs), unaltered                                #
'#                                                                      #
'#  b.  New folder (Recovered Files), created in the same folder        #
'#      as the FOI                                                      #
'#                                                                      #
'#  c.  Recovered FOIs saved in the Recovered Files folders             #
'#                                                                      #
'# #################################################################### #
'# General approach:                                                    #
'#                                                                      #
'# During the operation of this macro there will be a Progress bar      #
'# indicating the percentage of files that have been processed.         #
'#                                                                      #
'#  a.  Initialization                                                  #
'#                                                                      #
'#     i.  Determine the top level folder                               #
'#                                                                      #
'#     ii. Determine the filename parameters                            #
'#                                                                      #
'#     iii. Build an array of the FOIs and their absolute paths         #
'#                                                                      #
'#  b.  Main Process                                                    #
'#                                                                      #
'#     i.  Call Initialization, then                                    #
'#                                                                      #
'#     ii. For each file in the array (they're all FOIs):               #
'#                                                                      #
'#        1.  If no appropriate Recovered Files folder exists;          #
'#            create it                                                 #
'#                                                                      #
'#        2.  Open the FOI                                              #
'#                                                                      #
'#        3.  Copy the complete document                                #
'#                                                                      #
'#        4.  Open a new blank document based on Normal                 #
'#                                                                      #
'#        5.  Paste the clipboard into the blank document               #
'#                                                                      #
'#        6.  Close the FOI                                             #
'#                                                                      #
'#        7.  Save the blank docment in the appropriate                 #
'#            Recovered Files folder with the same filename as          #
'#            the FOI                                                   #
'#                                                                      #
'# #################################################################### #
'# Tips and Gotchas:                                                    #
'#                                                                      #
'#                                                                      # 
'########################################################################

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FYI: HansV referred to articles of Microsoft’s support & KB in Turn of track changes (2003)… which clarify that Word 2003 shows tracked changes automatically when opening a document (regardless whether you had them hidden before)… and what you can do about it.

Question: is there an advantage using copy-paste to get rid of all tracked changes rather than ‘accepting all changes’, when using automation?
E.g. to accept all changes in the current document, I would use something like:
Dim revLoop As Revision
Dim myRange As Range

Set myRange = Selection.Range
myRange.Wholestory
For Each revLoop In myRange.Revisions
revLoop.Accept
Next revLoop

Hasse

ps [indent]

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(…) Someone has suggested to me that comments and annotations can re-appear – has anyone encountered this?

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[/indent]Fwiw… yep… with tracked changes… during the upgrade process in our organisation. Previously no one cared about tracking changes. Untill suddenly, with Office 2003, these started to pop up out of the unexpected… In the long term, it might be an interesting enhancement to make you aware of this hidden info which others might be able to abuse. In situations where Office 97 users’ documents (to whom these changes are invisible by default) are processed and forwarded to upgraded users, it’s quite embarrassing though, certainly if you work with important documents and memoranda. (Because… who’s actually aware of the changes stored in the document? I guess close to no one…)
Btw… our (outsourced) IT helpdesk could only explain how to switch them off or accept all in the current document – but no more structured solution available for the several hundreds of documents we are processing. Printing to a pdf was no solution… as it just printed the visible tracked changes all along :-p. They said you can’t get rid of them (…) So not much help there… and I’m glad (again) to have the Lounge .
ps For those wanting to preserve changes with copy-paste, check this out: (Carry forward Track Changes (Word 97/2000/XP/2003)

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There is a bug in Word VBA – if there are tracked changes within a table, the loop For Each … Next may get stuck within the table. So copy/paste (if done correctly) might be more dependable.

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Thanks Hans… can you clarify what you mean with ‘if done correctly’? Is there some sample code you could refer to?
Hasse

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I don’t have code examples, but I what I meant is explained in the thread you refer to: if Track Changes is on, all revisions are accepted during copy/paste, but if Track Changes is off, revisions are preserved.

You can turn Track Changes on (or off) in code using ActiveDocument.TrackRevisions = True (or False)

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OK – got it – thanks & enjoy your weekend! – Hasse

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