Track Changes nurfed

[spawnnoob]

Hi All,

I need your guru help bad. I have read through some posts re track changes, and none seem to indicate having had this issue. When i track changes, instead of expected behaviour on tracking deletions... the deleted text actually deletes, and yes "show" is selected in edit menu and tracking is enabled because the rest of the text is formated as per normal track change formatting (underlined and specifically coloured by author). When i go into accept reject changes it only lists insertions, none of the deletes I do are shown, or can be filtered as they do not exist. All I get is insertions. There is no way to specifically configure writer with regard to what it will and wont track, you simply turn on tracking and it tracks ALL actions, i assumed. Has anyone else had this issue and if so how do you solve it?

I am running the latest install, downloaded 4 days ago, and have uninstalled and reinstalled app to see if this helped, it didn't, so I hunted through registery getting rid of any entries related to openoffice, and reinstalled still not good. The thing that is even scarier, is that when i first enabled tracking it behaved as expected, deletions remained on page with a strikethrough, and could be seen in the accept reject list, I was not sure as i had never worked with tracking before and thought hmmm i really hate that strikethrough and tried to remove it using the formatting toolbar and of course not much happened. I closed the .doc opened it again and since then cannot track deletions, Please do help guys I have an essay due tonight and showing tracking is part of the assessment criteria.

Cheers,
SPawny

[spawnnoob]

I sense that I am in the wrong time zone for quick responses, I also fear that in the attempt to replicate you will simply decide I am mad

I swear it is only tracking insertions - i can try to take a screeny sequence to at least demonstrate what is meant if that is required, but I am more than sure there is adequate information. Humbly yours and at your mercy

SPawny

[spawnnoob]

zomg...have i done something wrong? haha..not one reply hmmmmm

[Hagar Delest]

Is the Changes>Record option activated?

[spawnnoob]

Indeed, the observation shared is that the track change is only tracking insertion events, not deletion events, formats or table changes. The text I delete is being deleted instead of default formatting for track change event deletion (strikethrough). I would assume this answers the question? I will say also that Edit>Changes>Show is also selected to show tracked changes as they occur.

[floris v]

I can't reproduce that behaviour - not even if I save the file in MS Word format, which you probably do. I didn't try recording changes in formatting, but if I remember correctly, that wasn't supported by older versions of Word either.

[keme]

Normal behaviour with "record changes" enabled:

• If you insert text, that text will be marked as an insert. If you delete from that insert, deletion behaves like normal (content disappears without any edit markup).
• If you delete original text (text that was there before recording of changes was enabled), that text will remain, marked for deletion (overstrike).
• If a different user opens the document and deletes from an insert, it will be marked for deletion.
• Hover the mouse pointer over recorded changes to see who made them.

For this to work as intended, you need to enter user info (a name, at least). That's the info Writer uses to distinguish each source of changes. Problem arises when several users will make edits, and they haven't entered user info. All users without personal info will be regarded as the "unknown user", and inserts from one can be deleted by another without any edit markup showing (no recording of "changes to changes"). Not sure if the ".doc" format will retain that info (perhaps MS Office uses different mechanisms for the tracking, so their format doesn't support the storage of user info on each change). If not, working on ".ods", and only save the final submission as Word document might do the trick.

[Earthy]

I am having the same problem as spawnnoob reported. When viewing the document saved in Writer (MS Word 2007 .doc format) with Mac Word 2008, there is no tracking of changes. It would be great to be able to standardise on Writer but I need this function.

[floris v]

Seriously, I can't recommend using OOo and Word professionally in one project - it's bound to get you into trouble. In the long run, buying Word will cost you less than sticking to this misery.