[Originally appeared 2000.]
We return to the series of Word of Law columns on collaboration in the creation and editing of Microsoft Word documents. These columns themselves are a collaboration between Bob Blacksberg and Sherry Kappel of Microsystems. The first three columns in this series appeared in Word of Law No. 29, No. 30 and No. 31.
The next questions we set out to address were:
How do tools for document comparison – the phase which identifies changes in document content – improve or hinder our process? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these tools? Are tools internal to Word better than third-party tools? What do the third-party tools enable which internal Word functionality does not? What causes the document comparison process to break down? Once broken, how can it be fixed?
What are the differences between Word’s Track Changes, File Versions and Compare Documents features?
This week’s column examines the tools internal to Microsoft Word. The following weeks’ columns will review the third-party tools that address these needs.
Before digging in to Microsoft’s Word’s tools, we need to review the role of document comparison in the collaboration process. It is, of course, essential to shared responsibility for document editing or review for participants to be aware of the changes made as a document evolves.
To help understand document comparison and the collaboration tasks related to it more thoroughly and consistently, it helps to connect these to the collaboration functions described in issues 29 and 30. To “Track,” (with a deliberate connection to the “Track Changes” function of Word) means that authors, editors or reviewers can highlight insertions, moves or deletions as they are made. Tracking may include identification the person who made the change and the time it was made.
To “Compare” means to mark and report the differences between a document as we have drafted it and as another person has edited it, whether or not the changes were “tracked” during editing.
Finally, we need a word for the automation of acceptance or rejection of changes in the text of a document made during the collaboration or review process. The Word help file entitles that function “Incorporate reviewers’ changes…” so “Incorporate” is a good title.
In issue 29, we distinguished between the collaboration that occurs among a cooperative group from the review that occurs during an adversarial situation. Tracking, when it works, fits the needs of cooperative collaborators. In adversarial situations, however, the use of the Track Changes feature in Word may expose more information about the drafting process than desired. In that posture, only the comparison functions may be appropriate.
Let’s review, then, the tools offered by Microsoft Word for Tracking, Comparison and Incorporation. On its face, Microsoft Word 97 and 2000 offers tools that support all of these functions. (We will not cover the “OnLine Collaboration” features at this point). Tracking is supported by the Track Changes feature. The Track Changes function, when turned on using Tools|Track Changes|Highlight Changes or by double clicking on the TRK section of the status bar, causes inserted text to be marked in a special color, based on the User Name set in Name field of the Tools|Options|User Information dialog. Deletions are colored and struck through. With this option turned on, a document can accumulate a set of markings for one or a series of editors or reviewers. Word permits these markings to be visible during editing or hidden. Track changes stores name field value set in the User Information with each insertion and deletion in the document, along with the date and time of the change. Word also stores in the binary file format the name values of every user who has edited the document, whether or not track changes has been enabled.
Comparison is supported by Compare Documents, found under the menu Tools | Track Changes | Compare Documents. This function allows a document to be automatically marked, whether or not Track Changes has been enabled, by executing an automatic comparison between the document open on the screen and another document retrieved during the process. Again, insertions are marked in a special color, and deletions struck through. In this case all of the change bear the name field value contained in User Information and the date and time on the computer that executed the comparison at the time it was executed.
Incorporation is supported by Word’s Accept or Reject Changes function (Tools| Track Changes| Accept or Reject Changes. If a document has been marked using the Track Changes feature, or if a comparison document has been created using the Compare Document feature, a user is supposed to be able to review the changes in context and accept or reject each of them in turn.
Word 97 and 2000 are supposed to expand the collaboration capabilities of Track Changes with the Merge Documents function (Tools|Merge Documents). If you’re an old Word user, you’ll fondly remember our abilities to take an existing Word document,and “Merge” it with the revised edition of itself, to produce a third document which integrated the differences between them both.
This “Merge Documents” functionality, however, was revised in Word 97/2000 when instead it became a facility for integrating comments and tracked revisions made into a document by multiple collaborators. As long as each of the documents submitted by collaborative parties maintains their differences from the ‘original;’ only through use of tracked revisions, the ‘merger’ takes place without a hitch. However, should someone make untracked changes to the document, the ability to merge revisions and annotations become compromised and some type of manual intervention is required to pick out the changes and reinsert them as appropriately-tracked revisions. The Merge Documents feature generates a resulting Word document which contains the total assemblage of comments and revisions made amongst collaborators, ready now for Incorporation..
The frequency with which the word “supposed” appears in this column suggests all is not well with Words built-in document comparison features. Not all changes can be tracked automatically. A simple example is the deletion of a table row or column, which causes a message to appear that such a change cannot be tracked. For a relative simple collaboration situation, such as two users marking light revisions on a document not very complex, the use of the Track Changes function during editing may be satisfactory. For complex documents, with a large load of changes, moves and replacements, the legibility and ease of editing of a document may be impaired by Track Changes. The Incorporation task can be very difficult to follow, especially if a document has been edited by a number of reviewers.
Microsoft Word’s Compare Documents function may be the least successful of any of these built-in functions. It is quite trivial to produce situations where the Compare Document function produces illegible or incorrect results. This is the legacy Word currently bears as the core routines which facilitate their comparison technologies were actually written and introduced at Word’s 2.0 revision. Since that time, these features have been minimally maintained, but they began to show their age as far back as Word 6.0. This latest round of binary file changes – Word 97/2000 – brought enhancements in Word these features may not even recognize, such as text boxes and graphics.
We complete this weeks column with a quote from the Legal Users Guide available on Microsoft’s web site. This can be found at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/legal/track%20changes.htm:
IMPORTANT NOTE:Microsoft recommends that most law firms use a third party solution for document comparison, such as Lexis-Nexis’ CompareRite, or Workshare’s Deltaview. See the chapter on third party solutions for more information about these products. Microsoft Word’s compare documents features works on relatively simple documents that do not contain too much complex formatting. Because of the complex nature of most legal documents, Word’s compare documents feature does not produce as good a result as the third party products mentioned above. Microsoft is currently working to address this shortcoming, but in the meantime the third party solutions are recommended.
This 2000 article originally appeared in Office Watch. Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.