Re: Help! Software sugg. for eng. to do editing with

["Cepek, Marta" <marta -at- M3ISYSTEMS -dot- QC -dot- CA>]

>Somewhere back in my brain I remember the group covering this but, of course,
>I didn't save it because I didn't need it then.

>Problem: Engineers want to edit the text in soft (digital) copy.
>The writers  want to be able to see
>where the suggested changes were made and possibly
>have the changes ranked in some way (color of text?) to show if it's a
>very important correction or less important correction. I think they are using
>Word 6.0.

>Actually, the writers want the engineers to have only hard copy but that
>didn't fly.

>Software suggestions please!


Hi Dianne!

You'll probably get a dozen replies on this, but what the heck, I do this
with Word 6.0 quite frequently.

1. From the <Tools> menu, select <Protect Document> (If this were Word, I'd
be using
   bold for the words inside the <pointy brackets>).  A <Protect Document>
dialog box
   appears.  The <Revisions> radio button in the <Protect Document For>
group box is
   selected by default. (This is what you want).
2. In the <Password> field, enter a password you'll be able to remember but
different
   from any other password(s) you already use (so you won't compromise, say,
your
   network access, if you must give it out).  You will be prompted to
re-enter it.
3. Your document is protected.  Any changes to your document will
automatically be
   marked, and revision marking *cannot* be turned off without the password.

If you now go back into the <Tools> menu, you will notice that the <Protect
Document> option has changed to <Unprotect Document>.  If this option is
selected, you cannot change it without the password.

However, if you want to be crafty, you can set the revision marking as
"invisible" to the people who will work on the soft copy.

1. From the <Tools> menu, select <Revisions>.  The <Revisions> dialog box
appears.
   You will note that the <Mark Revisions While Editing> check box is
selected and
   dimmed, making it impossible to turn revision marking off.
2. Unselect the <Show Revisions on Screen> and <Show Revisions in Printed
   Document> check boxes and click on the <OK> push button.
3. Revisions made to the document will be tracked, but they will not show up
on screen
   while editing, nor in a hard copy.

Unless the person revising your document is really on the ball, s/he will
never notice that you're tracking revisions.  The only obvious clue (unless
they know to look in the <Tools> menu and notice the <Unprotect Document>
option) is that <MRK> is indicated on the status line at the bottom of the
screen.  When you get the document back, simply turn <Show Revisions on
Screen> and  <Show Revisions in Printed Document> back on to see what
they've changed.  You will have to unprotect the document (with the
password) if you wish to accept/reject the changes.

You can also determine how revisions will be displayed/printed.

1. From the <Tools> menu, select <Options>.  The <Options> dialog box appears.
2. In the <Options> dialog box, select the <Revisions> tab.  You can select
the color
   of inserted text and deleted text (I prefer them to be different colors)
and the
   type of underlining, strikethrough, etc. (this is especially useful in
the printout,
   as I *doubt* you print in color).  A very useful revision indicator is
the vertical line
   in the margin.  You'd be surprised at the number of little
(one-character) changes
   you'd miss if this is not selected.
3. One final note:  If you plan to print the document showing the revisions,
I strongly
   recommend you now access the <Compatibility> tab and make sure the <Print
colors
   as black on noncolor printers> check box is selected.  Otherwise, revised
text will print
   in a grainy gray, which may be difficult to read if your printer has a
low dpi resolution.

If it's already too late for one or two documents (i.e., your Engineer
already butchered it), the <Compare Versions> feature (available from the
<Revisions> dialog box) marks all differences between two documents.  I've
found it pretty handy in the past too.

I suppose I've been a lot more explanitory than I needed to be (after all,
you could get all of this information in the Word 6.0 User's Manual, but
you'd have to look in a bunch of different places, and as well, it won't
give you some of the extra tips I just did).  I use this feature a lot,
mainly because I've found that you can run the spell-checker on *only*
revised text, using the <Review Revisions> dialog box's <Find> feature and
spell-checking *only* the selection.

Cheers!
Marta