Comparing Documents and Paragraph Breaks

Question

This is actually simple if you’re sitting at the computer looking at it, but it may take a bit to explain. It happens in both Word 2011 for Mac and Word 2013 for PC. Upgrading to 2016 would definitely be on the table if I could be dead solid certain it would take care of the problem.

So… I copyedit books, and I use the track changes feature. I prefer to work with a copy of the document with track changes off and then, at the end, create a final copy with tracked changes by comparing the original version and my working copy.

I occasionally run across huge wall-of-text paragraphs and want to insert one or more paragraph breaks at carefully chosen places to break it down and create smaller paragraphs. Usually, this causes no problem.

But sometimes when I do it, I find that the compare function has deleted the remainder of the paragraph (starting at the point where I inserted the paragraph break) and then reinserted it. I don’t want this, of course, mainly because the deleted/reinserted part is likely to have small, separate edits such as correcting misspelled words or inserting commas—but now all of those small edits are rolled up into a single big edit. It’s all or nothing for that block of text as far as tracking is concerned.

I’ve played around with this quite a bit and can’t figure out exactly what conditions cause it. I only know that it happens occasionally when I insert paragraph breaks. In some documents it doesn’t happen at all; in others, I may end up with two or three dozen of these cursed things.

My workaround is that whenever I see this, I’ll to go back to the original file, insert a paragraph break at each problem spot, mark it with a couple of asterisks, and redo the compare. This avoids the big deletion and reinsertion and preserves the small, individual edits in the final version. Then, in the final version, I search for each pair of asterisks, delete them and the paragraph break with TC off, turn TC back on, and reinsert the paragraph break. This gives me correctly tracked paragraphs where I want them.

But it’s a hassle. And with enough of them, it can be time consuming. Now, assuming all that made sense, is there anyone else who has dealt with this problem? Is there a better way to handle it?

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply. I've done a bit of VBA in making simple Word macros that do other tasks, so maybe there's a way I can make my workaround more efficient.

I was kind of hoping there might be some way to deal with new paragraph breaks within the copy I'm working on, as I edit (leaving the original version alone), that would prevent Compare Documents from doing the big delete/reinsert on whole blocks in the first place and just track the individual edits. Maybe not, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

Answer 2

You're welcome. I am glad you have used VBA and are willing to try. VBA is the one thing that sets Microsoft Word apart from other word processors. The ability to automate tasks is extremely powerful computing.

Answer 3

I deleted Arshad's bizarre suggestion that you "check if some one with similar problem may reply to you with same."   That was the whole purpose of you asking the question here in the first place!

Based on your description you have already come up with a workaround to the problem of granularity of Word's track changes feature. Word doesn't do tracked changes within tracked changes.

When it comes to repetitive processes, you can automate them using Word's built-in programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) or with AppleScript, and soon, in Javascript. You can choose the language you are most familiar with. 

If you are new to Visual Basic for Applications, here are some resources for you:

http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=getting+started+vba

If you prefer to get started using AppleScript, here are some resources:

http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=applescript+getting+started