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When tracking text is too complex for everyone but geeks

Microsoft
Danyll Wills

I have a new job that requires me to edit a lot of text that other people have written. We are trying to work out a way of collaborating, but it is really difficult. Not everybody is happy with the 'Track Changes' function in Microsoft Word. It is barely possible with two participants, but when we have three or more the whole idea of tracking changes and following them becomes too complex for some people to handle.

One person in our group cannot even read the comments properly. (For most of us the comments appear in little boxes to the right of the main text. This person, however, sees them in a window at the bottom of the screen, but they do not point to the text. How can we fix that?) Is there a better way to work with others? Why must this be so complicated?

Name and address supplied

Discovery Bay

In computer science, what you are doing falls into a category of software known as 'version control'. It has been used in the past and continues to be used today, mainly by engineers (naturally), and can be quite sophisticated. Software developers use these systems, as well as other engineers working on large design projects.

There are many special terms used in this kind of work and I have pointed you to a site where you can learn more, if you want to. As with many things in computing, this kind of solution is not likely to be appealing if you have no background in the formal way of doing things. But even if you were willing to look into this, would you be able to get everybody on your team on board? I suspect it would be rather difficult.

Microsoft's Track Changes is not really a lot better, even though the firm has obviously put a lot of thought into it. As with so many things Microsoft does, Track Changes has a really 'geeky' feel to it. It is not elegant and can be quite confusing for people to use.

A friend of mine in the publishing business does use Track Changes with his writers, but he only uses it to write Comments.

That brings us to your specific question. If you click on Tools-Track Changes- Highlight Changes, you will see a box with a button 'Options'. Click on that and another window will come up at the bottom of which will be a section called 'Balloons'. Under that, there is a check box labelled 'Use balloons to display changes'. If that box is checked, your Comments will show up on the right-hand side of the page.

It is a fairly simple solution and one that should work reasonably well if you must deal with those who are barely computer literate.

The Wikipedia article below will give you pointers to far more sophisticated solutions if you think you need them. As always with these things, when you are dealing with a group of people you will be restricted to doing what the least-aware person on the team is comfortable with. That, however, is really not a technical problem: it is in the nature of working with people.

Lots of pointers to software and solutions about Revision control can be found here at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
If you want to look deeper into Microsoft's Track Changes, you can begin at http://office.microsoft.

com/en-us/assistance/HP05188

8551033.aspx

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