Compare lists deleted/inserted revisions for identical buttons and checkboxes

1. The different types of controls have slightly different appearances when they're in a document:

The box-and-three-dots on the content control appears only when the cursor is in the control. It's characteristic of all types of content controls.

The legacy form field may or may not be shaded, depending on option settings. If you can click to put an X in the box when nothing is turned on in the Restrict Editing pane, then you don't have a legacy form field.

The ActiveX controls may have captions like the ones shown above, but the plug-in could have set them to show no text.

Another way to identify the controls is to right-click them and click Properties. The dialogs that appear are all different:

2. As noted above, if the controls operate when nothing in the Restrict Editing pane is turned on, that eliminates the legacy form field as a possibility.
3. This indicates (as I suspected) that the controls are ActiveX.

Knowing this, I am able to reproduce the problem in the Compare feature by comparing two identical documents.

I don't believe there's any workaround for this; it's something Microsoft's developers would have to fix in the Compare code. You can submit this as a suggestion at https://word.uservoice.com/, and I'll separately submit it through the MVP program.

By the way, your version of Office 365 should be updated to either 1902 or 1908. You'll probably have to check with your company's administrator for that. However, it won't solve this problem, which still exists in the Monthly Channel release 2001.

I haven't been able to reproduce the behavior you're seeing. To try to get to the cause, please answer a few questions:

• What kind of check boxes and buttons are you using? Are they ActiveX (the only kind of control that offers either option buttons or command buttons), legacy form fields, or content controls?
• Is any kind of protection ("Editing Restriction") applied to the documents?
• Take a screen shot of the Compare Documents dialog box and post it in your reply so we can see what options are checked. (If needed, see this instruction page.)
• What version/build of Office 365 are you using? Go to File > Account and post the version and build numbers under "About Word".

Neha,

Sorry I took so long to reply.

I am testing what is essentially a plug-in to the Word ribbon which generates a Word document based on selections from the plug-in; in some cases, the Word document generated includes CheckBoxes and RadioButtons.  I am not the developer of the plug-in, so I am unsure of how these are generated.

1. Is there a way to determine ActiveX/legacy form fields/content controls by examining the generated documents?
2. There does not appear to be any protection involved (nothing is checkboxed in Review>Protect>Restrict Editing)
3. ALL of the Comparison settings are checked.  If I un-check "Fields", then Compare will not identify CheckBox and RadioButton differences, but doing so would fail to identify an unchecked control from a checked one...and I want such differences reported

4. I am using Word version 1808 (Build 10730.20334 Click-to-Run)

Hi Brain,

I am writing to follow up on this case. Did you check above reply? Please update us when you have time.

Regards,

Neha

Hi Brain,

In addition, to Jay’s reply, please provide the screenshot of Office 365 Product Information. To get this screenshot, open any Office app such as Excel or Word on your computer, click File>Account, capture the screenshot of all the information mentioned under Product Information.

Please provide us with requested information, so we can understand the situation to help you further.

Regards,

Neha