Question about comments

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rhino
  • Start date Start date
R

Rhino

I'm new to Word and have a very basic question: are comments visible to
anyone but the author of the document?

I would like my document to include a notation that says when it was last
revised but I don't want anyone else to be able to see it. This is just an
internal safeguard for my purposes; I'll always distribute a copy of my
document from a folder on my PC. If anyone ever wants to know the last
revision date, which is very unlikely in my case, they can call me and I can
get it from the copy in my folder.

Is a comment the right technique to use to store this information? If not,
what is a better way?

I'm using Word 2002.
 
Comments are visible to anyone who has display of comments turned on. They
may also print!

I would use a document property (File > Properties > Custom) but that is not
secret either. If you really want to make it hard to find, use a document
variable. This can only be seen using vba. I use a download from Chris
Woodman's site that lets me set them and read them using a menu command.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
 
Hmmmm.....

Document properties are 'hard to find' but this can be circumvented by a
free download (for those who don't know how to do it themselves) - not
really secret then!

Rhino,

There are all sorts of ways to hide information from casual readers of a
document but none to hide it from knowledgeable and/or determined readers.
And I can't understand your requirement to hide something which you are
quite prepared to tell to anyone who asks. If you really want to hide the
information you'll have to keep it separately from the document - and in the
case of a revision date you'll have to deliberately 'fiddle' the one which
Word keeps visibly (under File > Properties) with the document.

--
Enjoy,
Tony


Charles Kenyon said:
Comments are visible to anyone who has display of comments turned on. They
may also print!

I would use a document property (File > Properties > Custom) but that is not
secret either. If you really want to make it hard to find, use a document
variable. This can only be seen using vba. I use a download from Chris
Woodman's site that lets me set them and read them using a menu command.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.
Click to expand...
 
Your points are well-taken. You're right, it's pretty odd to hide something
that isn't secret and which you'd willing give to anyone who asks.

Let me be a bit less cryptic.

The document in question is my resume and macro(s) I've been developing for
the past few days are going to generate it "on demand", i.e. when I run the
VBScript that starts Word invisibly and invokes my main macro.

I could invoke the VBScript at any time and will likely do so several times
a day while I'm in development mode, but I'd probably only do so very
infrequently after that. It would be nice to be able to determine when the
version of the resume which is currently in 'resume.doc' was generated; that
would help me confirm that I'm looking at the latest and greatest version.
But I don't particularly want the people who get the resume to see when it
was last updated since this will not normally be a concern for them. After
all, when we are given resumes, we assume they are current and don't really
need to know the precise date when they were last updated.

That's why I was looking for some way of reliably recording the last-update
date in the document so that I could find it when I need it but not
flaunting it in the face of readers of the resume.

Maybe document properties are the way to go then. I'm not going to be
perturbed if someone goes to the trouble of finding that date but I will
have avoided putting it in the actual document itself where it might
distract a reader. (I can see the benefit of being able to put Comments in a
document and sharing them with other readers during the draft/revision
stages of a document but I thought the Comments were rather distracting in a
final version of the document.)

What do you think?

--
Rhino

Tony Jollans said:
Hmmmm.....

Document properties are 'hard to find' but this can be circumvented by a
free download (for those who don't know how to do it themselves) - not
really secret then!

Rhino,

There are all sorts of ways to hide information from casual readers of a
document but none to hide it from knowledgeable and/or determined readers.
And I can't understand your requirement to hide something which you are
quite prepared to tell to anyone who asks. If you really want to hide the
information you'll have to keep it separately from the document - and in
the
case of a revision date you'll have to deliberately 'fiddle' the one which
Word keeps visibly (under File > Properties) with the document.
Click to expand...
 
On my resumé I always put the date in the footer so that it is clear to all,
but I guess that's a choice.

The last saved date (File > Properties > General tab) would seem to give you
what you want without the need for further action.
 
Actually, I went ahead and figured out how to set and get custom properties
of my own choosing. Now, the last thing my macro does before it finishes is
to create a custom property named LAST_REVISION_DATE and populate it with
the value in the 'now' function; if the LAST_REVISION_DATE already exists,
it is updated.

Just for the heck of it, I also created a sub that will display the values
of all of the custom properties in the document. Then, I created another sub
that deletes all of the custom properties in the document after first
ensuring that the user is certain that he wants to do the delete.

This is a very satisfactory solution for me. Aside from the effort of
learning how to write these subs, I now have the last revision date stored
and maintained automatically in the document with no further action required
on my part. I can easily determine my last revision date but the user of the
document has no idea that it is there.

Thank you for your help with this question - and the others you've helped me
with on other newsgroups!
 
: I'm new to Word and have a very basic question: are comments
visible to
: anyone but the author of the document?
:
: I would like my document to include a notation that says when
it was last
: revised but I don't want anyone else to be able to see it. This
is just an
: internal safeguard for my purposes; I'll always distribute a
copy of my
: document from a folder on my PC. If anyone ever wants to know
the last
: revision date, which is very unlikely in my case, they can call
me and I can
: get it from the copy in my folder.
:
: Is a comment the right technique to use to store this
information? If not,
: what is a better way?
:
: I'm using Word 2002.
:
: --
: Rhino
:
:
I'd just use the Hidden Text attribute. Then you can see it when
you want to, but get rid of it otherwise from the screen.
 
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