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Elizabeth OShea wonders: <<Does anyone have any words of wisdom on using the
Versions feature in Word? I assume it bulks up the size of a file. I have
used it occassionally and found it useful, but I once had problems with a
doc that seemed to arise
from versions.>>
We've been using Versions here for just over a year with no particularly
disastrous problems, though there have been a few instances of odd behavior
that I suspect (but can't prove) are related to the use of Versions. I've
also read in various newsgroups about people being burned by the Versions
feature--the usual "mysterious document corruption" problems that may have
nothing to do with versioning, or may indeed be a symptom of a buggy
implementation.
My biggest reservation about versions is twofold. First, the way it works
sounds suspiciously like a modified version of the Fast Save function, and
that's a well-known recipe for disaster. If the programmers borrowed some of
the code from Fast Save and modified it to permit versioning (reusing code
is a common occurrence), it's a disaster waiting to happen. Second, Versions
provides no benefits (other than storing everything in a single file) over
saving a separate copy of the file under a new name (e.g., based on the
reviewer or creation date). Given that it's questionable and doesn't offer
any compelling benefits, I'd not use it if I weren't forced to do so.
If you're going to use Versions, try two things to save your sanity: First,
make sure you've got really good backups of each "checkpoint" version; for
example, save a dated copy to diskette after each author or reviewer
completes their work on the document. That way, you can at least recover the
previous version if a problem develops. Second, when the number of versions
displayed gets too large ("large" being an entirely subjective figure),
delete the versions and save the file without any versioning. That should
clean up any incipient corruption and let you start over with a clean slate.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html
"With Linux, customers end up being in the operating systems business,
managing software updates and security patches while making sure the
multitude of software packages don't conflict with each other."--Microsoft
spokesperson in a News.com article
"And just how would that be different from Windows?"--Adam Engst, TidBITS
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