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Change bars for technical writing

Anonymous
2022-04-15T18:50:10+00:00

Good Morning,

To start off, I use Microsoft word for technical writing. The nature of my work frequently requires revisions to documents with change bars. At this point I have experimented with every way you can do change bars only to continuously find frustration around every corner. There are two methods I know if for creating change bars:

  1. Use track changes.
    • This is the preferred method, because in theory with the next revision, you should be able to accept all of the changes and the change bars should disappear, which will then get replaced by another set. In theory this process should be smooth and easy. I will specify the situation I found today where this does not work below.
    • Most manuals do not always get updated or revised by me. So track changes is the easiest way for me to pass a revised document onto a client for them to be able to clear then change bars at the next revision. Just accept all changes and its done.
  2. Insert a side border on changed text.
    • This is a more round about method. I would not say its more time consuming to add them, but taking them at that the next revision, especially when you have a lot of changes IS time consuming, especially if you are making many changes throughout the manual. The repetition of this leaves room for error, which generally occurs in some form or another.

Okay here is the problem I had with track changes and change bars today. For all of the documents in my line of work (technical writing), the document are created and revised in word and then converted to a PDF. This is where the problem lies. Today the issue I came across involved adding an item to a numbered list. Now, the track changes function seems like it was created more for editing the details of a document. So changes works great for just that, tracking changes. But, and this is where I may be missing something, track changes is so complex, it does not work well if you are only wanting to do one simple thing, which is adding change bars. Or at least if there is a good way, I have not found it.

Today my issue was adding an item to a numbered list. The way I obtain change bars, is I type out all of my changes and get the formatting just the way it needs to be. Then I copy the text, delete the text, turn on track changes, paste the change, turn track changes off and boom we have change bars that are easy to remove. Now lets say we have a numbered list with 2 items. If I want to insert an additional number in the middle of 1 and 2, 2 now becomes three and track changes recognizes and tracks that. Well in word if I do not want to see that "2" changed to a "3", I can just select "simple markup" and it will not show in the document. But, when I go to convert it to a PDF (which is done in word), the converted PDF shows the changes. So now I have to edit the PDF manually because my numbered list now looks like this. I could not do the entire document because it has client info, but this is what the converted PDF looks like:

![](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/2aa80576-8ca1-42e4-9af9-e1f44731507c?platform=QnA"https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/4f56ef79-e607-46c7-9aca-d33d6bf0c8ff?platform=QnA" rel="ugc nofollow">

Additionally I saw options below here for a word app for business or personal. I think this was originally a personal account when I bought the computer and now it is for business. is there any difference between the two outside of subscription differences?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-05-02T23:47:12+00:00

    Hey Stefan,

    Yes this did help fix the specific issue if the deletions showing, so thank you for that.

    At the same time when it comes to technical writing the use of change bars are really the only portion of track changes that is used. Once the document is created its much easier to collaborate and keep track of comments using adobe, just because the screen is less cluttered.

    This part may be lengthy, but I'm going to do my best to keep it short.

    But when it come to change bars and tracking revision changes within a manual, track changes becomes more difficult. For example lets say a manual have is currently on revision 10.

    • Within revision 10, each page that has an individual header with a date and revision number, which means the manual will have individual pages with revisions that number revision 1 through 10, each with different dates.
    • If a page was changed on the revision 1 using track changes, technically to maintain the integrity of the manual, the change bars would need to remain until the next time that page was revised, accidentally deleting a change bar is very easy and the change bar is gone.
      • The revision page seems to track what "revision" the manual is on, but really this only tracks how any time track changes was used, and
      • Each individual change in the reviewing pane, does not show the revision.
      • For instance the document I am working with now says two revisions have been completed, when in reality the document is on the first revision.
      • This is complex and not intuitive in my opinion, if it were, I would not be here trying to wrap my brain around how this works.
    • Manually inserting a change bar is not an option, unless you use a line that is inserted. This works, but they often turn out crooked depending on who does the revision and it is not tracked.
      • The other option is using a border on the right, which does not work if there is a change made to a table. I have not had luck with inserting a left border either. Again, this is complex to remove.

    The best way, in my opinion would be an option to highlight text and insert a change bar, just like you can with a comment. The ability to insert and track change bars, if they were a function similar to comments would be easy to use and easy to track and much less complex.

    I am open to any other ideas, but at the end of the day if you are needing to teach somebody who does not regularly use word on a daily basis, the track changes is complex and subject to specific settings, which is just an additional point of failure and difficulty for users. I think track changes probably works great for other applications, but a simple option would be much better and easier to use.

    Thanks for reading

    Tanner

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  2. Stefan Blom 338.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-04-16T10:15:04+00:00

    To get only the Changed Lines, choose the "All Markup" view on the Review tab and, in the Advanced Track Changes Options dialog box, specify the options illustrated below:

    Image

    I'm not sure if that would do what you want, though.

    Note that the options in the dialog box apply to the application as a whole, except for "Track moves" and "Track formatting" which are saved with the document (or template).

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-04-16T15:48:56+00:00

    That may do it. I appreciate the response Stefan. I'll play around with it on Monday and relay back to you next week.

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  4. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 322.9K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-04-16T03:18:11+00:00

    I completely lost track of the actual problem. I would recommend however that you do NOT set the marking of deletions to (none).

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