Re: Using Compare in Word

[John Posada <jposada -at- NOTES -dot- CC -dot- BELLCORE -dot- COM>]

Linda...

I write proposals for a large telecommunications company and I use the revision
comparison feature of Word alot.  Usually, after each draft, the people on the
team involved with the creation of the document will make changes in a document
and it's my job to make sure that their editing changes conform to company and
grammatical conventions, as well as being a starting point for me to add
additional information.

Yes, it does work as advertised and it allows you to compare one version
against another.

You will see the changes in color, with text underlined if it's new in the
document and crossed through if it has been deleted in the new document.  You
will also see change bars in the margin of the text whereever a change occurs.

Couple of things to keep in mind.

1) You might want to change the default where added and deleted text both show
in the same color on the screen.  The default has both showing in blue.  I have
it changed so that the deleted text shows in red and the new text shows in blue.

2) So that you don't see revisions that were carried over from versions other
than the two that you are working with, before you do the comparison, accept
the changes in both versions, then comapre the two versions.  Let's say you are
dealing with doc_v1.doc and doc_v2.doc.  Open doc_v1 and accept the changes,
then save and close it.  Open doc_v2.doc, accept the changes, then save it.
You can now compare v1 against v2 and you will only have the changes between
these two versions marked.

3) Make sure you have the proper boxes checked on the Revisions openning dialog
screen.

The process takes alitle getting used to, but it will save you many hours of
time.

John Posada
- Central New Jersey Employment Manager
Society for Technical Communication
http://stc.org/region2/njc/

- Technical Proposal Writer
Bell Communications Research
(908) 699-5839 (W)
jposada -at- notes -dot- cc -dot- bellcore -dot- com

"Its wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago"
        - Vice President Dan Quayle, 4/30/91
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I don't speak for my employer and they return the favor
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I'm starting a small new project - updating some existing docs - and just
discovered that the markups I'm getting were done directly in the document
files, not on paper, and that no effort was made to differentiate the
changes from the existing text.

I've looked at the online help for Word 6 and Word 7 for the compare
function.  (Word 6's help was immensely more helpful, BTW, while 7's has
more bells and whistles.)  It looks like the compare function compares
the original files (which I have) to the edited files and "marks
inserted, deleted and revised text with revision marks."

This sounds pretty slick.  Has anyone actually tried this?  If so, does
it work as well as it sounds like it does?  Is there anything I should be
aware of or watch out for?

Thanks in advance.
Linda