[Solved] Reviewing Tools to track changes

[op89x]

I'm a teacher in a low-income school and we use Linux in our classrooms. It works out great and OOo is one of the reasons it works so well. I enjoy using Writer and actually prefer it over Word, but I'm running into just one problem.

I was re-located from a school with Windows and Microsoft Word installed on all of the computers, and Word has an excellent feature that allows my students to e-mail me their papers and use tools within Word (Special Reviewing Toolbar) to make comments and mark the text I removed, the text I added, and the changes I made within the document. This allows me to send the document back to my students so that they can see everything I've done on their paper.

I would like to use this in my classroom next semester, but I cannot find these tools within Writer. It is possible Writer does not have these tools, but when I found a list of the differences between Word and Writer online, this was not mentioned at all. Are the features missing, or am I simply not finding them? And if they are missing, are there plans to implement them in a future version?

[acknak]

Have you tried Edit > Changes > Record / Show ?

You may want to review the sections in the Writer Guide on working with revisions--there's a good overview of all the tools there.

OOo Guides

[op89x]

Hmm...my comments option is grayed out. I'll try to find a solution. Thanks for your quick reply!

[acknak]

The Edit > Comments feature is tied to the last change made, so you have to have at least one recorded change before you can make a comment.

You can add a note at any time: use Insert > Note.

The notes are pretty limited compared to Word (so I hear), but they are being re-worked and a new version of the feature is almost ready, so things are improving.

[Caracalla]

The notes are pretty limited compared to Word (so I hear), but they are being re-worked and a new version of the feature is almost ready, so things are improving.

Almost? 2.4 won't be there until March/April of next year. Certainly not in time for the next semester. It does look promising though.

[op89x]

Well, maybe someone will work on a plug-in before the new version is released. Thanks for all your help, guys.

[acknak]

Considering the average life span of a feature/enhancement request, 3-4 months is even less than "almost", it's instantaneous.