Cannot switch 'track changes' on

[Sander Spek]

Dear all,

I have a document which I have created in OpenOffice Writer (sorry for
that). From this point on, we'll have to work on that document with multiple
people, and for the others it has to be Microsoft Word. So, I saved the
document from OOwriter into MS Word XP doc format.

When I open it it MS Word, everything looks fine. The only problem is that
track changes cannot be switched on. It is grayed out in both the menu and
the status bar on the bottom. Why is this? Is there any way that I can switch
track changes on?

(By the way, the problem does not appear only on my computer. Also my
co-workers report that they cannot switch 'track changes' on in the doc file
I sent to them.)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Sander,

I have a document which I have created in OpenOffice Writer (sorry for
that). From this point on, we'll have to work on that document with multiple
people, and for the others it has to be Microsoft Word. So, I saved the
document from OOwriter into MS Word XP doc format.

When I open it it MS Word, everything looks fine. The only problem is that
track changes cannot be switched on.

It's quite possible that the software you used to create the document doesn't
write the exact *.doc file format Word 2002 is expecting. Have you tried saving
the document in Word, closing, then re-opening it?

If that doesn't straighten things out, try saving to RTF, closing, re-opening,
saving again as a *.doc, closing, then re-opening.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Sander Spek]

Hello Cindy,

Thank you for your suggestions, but...

It's quite possible that the software you used to create the document doesn't
write the exact *.doc file format Word 2002 is expecting. Have you tried saving
the document in Word, closing, then re-opening it?

I did now, but it doesn't help.

If that doesn't straighten things out, try saving to RTF, closing, re-opening,
saving again as a *.doc, closing, then re-opening.

That does help, but sadly the RTF messes up all automatic footnotes, images,
etcetera. Given the size and complexity of the document, that's hardly a
solution to me.

But thank you for your suggestion.

Sander

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi Sander,

That does help, but sadly the RTF messes up all automatic footnotes, images,
etcetera. Given the size and complexity of the document, that's hardly a
solution to me.

OK, at least we've narrowed it down to the file, itself.

How about saving to Word's "round-trip" web page (HTML) file format?

One other thing you can try is to copy/paste everything but the last paragraph mark
into a new document.

However... If the file is that complex it's possible you've used things in it -
native to the other software - that Word cannot work with or interpret correctly.
It may be that you will not be able to use Track Changes in the document as long as
it contains these "non-Word" entities. In that case, you may have to recreate the
document more or less from the ground up (starting with the RTF result, for
example).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in
the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Sander Spek]

Hello,

I found an alternate solution. If I first switch ‘track changes’ on in
OpenOffice, and then save the document as DOC, I can open it in Word and the
track changes is on. The only problem is that now it cannot be switched off,
but I guess that's something I can live with.

(Stupid that I didn't think of this before.)

Thanks for the suggestions,

Sander

 

[Sander Spek]

Solved!

In the menu, there's an option tools > unprotect document.

Apparantly, OpenOffice standard applies some protection rules that does
allow editing but no change tracking.

 

[Cindy M.]

Solved!

In the menu, there's an option tools > unprotect document.

Apparantly, OpenOffice standard applies some protection rules that does
allow editing but no change tracking.

Thanks for taking a moment to report back Just for clarification: Is
this "Tools/Unprotect document" in Word or in the Open Office application?

--Cindy Meister