Word 2003 Tracked Changes

[Guest]

Is there a way to turn off Tracked Changes without going through the hoops
found in this article?
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010983881033.aspx
From what I've read about Tracked Changes, it appears that there is no way
to 'shut off' this information from being hidden in the document. Of course,
there are add-in for converting to .pdf etc, but why doesn't Word offer a
setting (one setting and not confusing multiple settings stated in this
article) to turn this 'feature' off.

Can anyone explain what the purpose is of having changes tracked from
Microsoft's viewpoint?

With all of the press lately about legal issues and document retention and
storage, there should be a way to shut this down without attending a training
session.

Thanks for your feedback.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Ofisteqi,

If you never turn on Tracked Changes in the Tools menu for a particular
document, the changes won't be tracked in that document. That's all there is
to that.

If you do turn on Tracked Changes, you must have a purpose in doing so --
you want someone else (or yourself later on) to see what was changed. Or you
received the document from someone else who intended that. The feature is
primarily for sharing and reviewing information in a workgroup.

Once you do track changes, they stay in the document until you remove them.
The procedure given in that article isn't complicated. It boils down to
this: "If you want to send a document that has tracked changes, and you
don't want the recipient to see them, then use the Accept All button on the
Reviewing toolbar." As the article is written, it takes into account the
possibilities that (a) the toolbar might not be visible when you start, (b)
some of the options might have been turned off, and (c) you might want to
remove some changes and not others.

If you're worried about stuff being hidden in Word documents, get the
hidden-data-remover add-in from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=834427.

This stuff isn't rocket science. For someone who alludes to being an "Office
Techie" it shouldn't even be worth commenting about.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

"Turning off" Track Changes is easy. The problem is that many users don't
realize that turning off tracking merely causes Word to stop tracking the
changes; it doesn't remove the change tracking that has already been added
to the document. To do that, you have to *accept* the changes. To do this in
Word 2002/2003, you click the arrow beside the Accept Change button on the
Reviewing toolbar and choose Accept All Changes in Document. You can delete
all comments the same way (using the Reject Change menu).

That said, documents can contain other sorts of "metadata" such as user
information. Recent versions of Word make this quite easy to remove (there's
a setting on the Security tab of Tools | Options). If you want to be sure of
removing as much personal information from the file as possible, get the
Hidden Data Remover tool at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...ED-D43E-42CA-BC7B-5446D34E5360&displaylang=en

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

Jeez Jay,
You didn't have to personalize your response. If I was a true Office Techie
like you, I would have gotten an MVP certification and the big bucks that
comes with that title. Try not to forget what it was like when you were
learning all this stuff.

As Suzanne stated in her reply, there are multiple settings to configure
because this 'feature' is turned on by default. That's why this configuration
is so confusing, because of the multiple steps that are required to simply
turn it off. I understand why the feature is available, because in some
applications, it would be very useful.

But when you push this software out to 10k desktops, one overlooked setting
like this generates alot of support calls. Those that share documents with
outside vendors want this information striped out for legal reasons and
that's why I asked in the first place. I'm creating a 'cheat sheet' with
instructions and unfortunately, one setting doesn't remove everything.

Thanks for your prompt replies. It's appreciated.

Ofisteqi wannabe...because I started out in this field with WordPerfect 5.0
and I miss it's simplicity...sniff.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I think you have misunderstood our response. It sounds as if your solution
is to turn off the setting to display markup automatically. This is
dangerous! If there is hidden markup in a document, you *want* users to be
able to see it! That is the reason the setting is on the Security tab.
Hiding the markup is not the same as removing it.

Also, FWIW, MVPs are not paid. We're all volunteers.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Ofisteqi,

Sorry if I sounded abrupt. Probably I should have thrown in a smiley or two.
The "big bucks" comment certainly gets a grin here. Believe it or not, I do
this 'cause I like to -- my wife wonders why I "help Bill for free"...

I think there's still some confusion floating around here. The Track Changes
feature is definitely not turned on by default, and neither is the Comments
feature. Both of them need positive action by the user to start putting
stuff into a document.

Once there are both tracked changes and comments in the document, then yes,
it takes a couple of steps to remove them -- or you can run the Hidden-Data
Removal tool. The "Warn before..." setting in Tools > Options > Security can
help you remember that you have stuff to remove, and I believe you can use
Group Policy to set that option.

Yeah, I remember WordPerfect 5.1 fondly -- but it wasn't all that simple.
Remember the huge wad of printer drivers you had to keep around? Remember
having a plastic strip attached to your keyboard with a 4-level legend of
all the function keys? (Actually, I still have one of those, and I use the
back of it for mainframe access functions. <g>)

 

[Guest]

Jay,
You're forgiven. I know MVP's are volunteers and that's why I'm not one of
them! I do have to agree with your wife though, smiles.
Thanks for the assistance. Our end users have locked down permissions on
their desktops, so adding a utility like you mention, isn't feasible. But now
that I know about it, I can suggest it to Corp. Happy Holidays.