How to stop Word from opening in Markup mode? (Word 2003 / Windows XP SP2)

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Hello,
I am trying to figure out a way to open word documents that contain tracked changes WITHOUT having it default to “Final Showing Markup”. The same thing happens when I go
to Print out a word document. MS Word wants to print out the document with “Final Showing Markup”. I have multiple word documents that I have to convert (batch process) into a large PDF and I don’t want to have to manually create each PDF after opening and saving the word document to “Final”. Can anyone assist with this issue? Thanks in advance. Jim

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Word 2003 has a security option – by default, it shows tracked changes when you open a document. If you don’t know there are tracked changes, sending the document to someone outside your company might cause considerable embarrassment!

To turn this off, select Tools | Options, activate the Security tab and clear the check box “Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving”. Do this at your own risk.

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Hello Hans,
Thanks for the reply. I unchecked the box you mentioned and was able to create a PDF without any markup, BUT I was not able to get MS Word (2003) to remember this setting. I have closed both the document and MS Word and have reopened it, but it still defaults to “Final Showing Markup”. Any other suggestions? Thanks, Jim

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Apparently Microsoft overrules the setting. I think you should live with it – not knowing that there are tracked changes in a document is dangerous. But if you really want to change it, you could create the following macro in your Normal.dot:

Sub AutoOpen()
With ActiveWindow.View
.ShowRevisionsAndComments = False
.RevisionsView = wdRevisionsViewFinal
End With
End Sub

This will set Final view whenever you open a document. Once again, use at your own risk!

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Thanks Hans!!! That did the trick. It even took care of the popup prompts that I was getting in Adobe Acrobat professional – when generating a PDF from multiple MS Word documents. Thanks once again! Jim

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