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Finding the places in a Word document that have features that are incompatible with earlier versions

Anonymous
2017-08-15T00:18:22+00:00

Hi,

I have several Word 2016 documents that I need to convert to .doc format in order to fix a serious typing lag issue with them. In order to see what features I'll be losing when I do this, I have gone into File > Inspect Document > Check compatibility.  I get a list of features that are not supported in earlier versions (see screenshot below).

Is there a way to find out where in my document each of these features occurs (so I can potentially change them)?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-08-16T00:57:23+00:00

Thanks for your reply Cliff, but I've seen the article you linked to and it didn't really help me. For example, my screenshot shows that my document has 16 occurrences where "effects on text will be removed".

This article tells me that text effects are available in 2010 but not 2003 or earlier and that they will be removed and not reinstated unless associated with a custom style. That's all. What are they? Where are they in my document? Do I even want them and how did they get there?

Does that make it clearer what I'm trying to work out?

Thanks!

Unfortunately while the "compatibility check" identifies a problem in aggregate, it is too lazy/stupid to identify the specific locations and features.  Thank you very much MS ... You can't even use the Find feature, because it has not been updated to look for these new features.

"Effects on text" means that a feature has been applied to change the look of the text. But they don't specify what effects ... Bold is an "effect", but it is supported, etc

"Text Effects" introduced in 2010 is something distinct.  The 2010 "text effects" command is a button in the Home tab > Font group a blue outline A

The only way I know of to find these effects is the brute force approach. Display the Format Text Effects pane (PAIN!) and mouse through your document until you see values appear in the pane.  Yup, as a suggestion it sucks for big documents

For example above I added a shadow effect to the word "left" in the example document. It shows up as 1 effect in the compatibility check.  When the insertion point is inside the word, the shadow values show up in the pane ...

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Paul Edstein 82,861 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2017-08-16T22:59:33+00:00

The only way I could get to a Compare tool was from the Review menu (compare two versions of a document (legal blackline). Is that what you were talking about?

Oops - yes. Updated.

I'm surprised so many changes were identified - this is far more than the Compatibility Checker identified. Nevertheless, it seems the Compare tool identifies far more real changes than the Compatibility Checker did. The question for you to decide, then, is which of those changes matter. What I can see from your screenshot, for example, is that the border has disappeared from the box above 'Proprietary Notice'.

Since the exercise is about resolving document performance issues, perhaps you should reconsider the approach I suggested earlier. The copy/paste approach alone provides a quick fix in most cases.

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  1. Paul Edstein 82,861 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2017-08-15T07:41:16+00:00

    I have several Word 2016 documents that I need to convert to .doc format in order to fix a serious typing lag issue with them.

    It's possible the documents concerned have acquired some of corruption. Simply changing to the .doc format may not resolve that. However, corrupt documents can often be 'repaired' by inserting a new, empty, paragraph at the very end, copying everything except that new paragraph to a new document based on the same template (headers & footers may need to be copied separately), closing the old document and saving the new one over it.

    Similarly, corrupt tables (which the above process won't repair) can often be 'repaired' by:

    • converting the tables to text and back again;

    • cutting & pasting them to another document that you save the document in RTF format, which you then close then re-open before copying them back to the source document; or

    • saving the document in RTF format, closing the document then re-opening it and re-saving in the doc(x) format.

    Do note that some forms of table corruption can only be repaired by the first method.

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-08-15T02:31:21+00:00

    Thanks for your reply Cliff, but I've seen the article you linked to and it didn't really help me. For example, my screenshot shows that my document has 16 occurrences where "effects on text will be removed". I don't know what those effects are, or where they are in my document. This is what I want to try to find out (and similarly for the other occurrences in the screenshot).

    This article tells me that text effects are available in 2010 but not 2003 or earlier and that they will be removed and not reinstated unless associated with a custom style. That's all. What are they? Where are they in my document? Do I even want them and how did they get there?

    Does that make it clearer what I'm trying to work out?

    Thanks!

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  3. Anonymous
    2017-08-15T02:14:56+00:00

    Hi Jane,

    In Compatibility Mode, some features’ behavior will be changed.

    For your questions, you may refer to the article for more information.

    Thanks,

    Cliff

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