Microsoft Word 2007 'Track Changes' and 'Compare'

With respect to document comparison, Microsoft Word 2007 couldn't have been released at a better time for law firms. Word 2007's Track Changes and Compare features are as good, if not better, than traditional “outside-the-application” document comparison products. Couple this with the current economic recession in which most firms are reevaluating their document comparison technology investments ' and for good reason. Investing in outside the application document comparison products is expensive. “A PC that cost $1,500 when a firm did its last hardware refresh might cost $800 now, yet it still takes between $3,500 and $5,000 per year to support that computer,” according to market research firm Gartner, Inc.

Today's license and support costs for outside-the-application document comparison products, plus the additional costs for clean-up tools that work with them, are about 2%-4% percent of the yearly support cost for a PC. A significant number of firms are now, for the first time, asking themselves: “Why should we invest in outside technology for features already built into Microsoft Word 2007?” The question they should really be asking: “Is Microsoft Word 2007 ready to go it alone?”

A Brief History

Since Microsoft Word for Windows came on the market (16-plus years ago), Word's Track Changes and Compare has been analogous to scratching a chalkboard with your fingernails. Most trainers and even some industry pundits, who taught and wrote about best practices for Word, taught users not to use Word's Compare feature. I never understood that, because from the very start I saw Track Changes as an incredible collaborative benefit to the legal market.

Track Changes is the result of two processes ' redlining, or the tracking of markups while editing the document, and using Word's comparison engine to compare or merge two documents.

I believe the negativity about Track Changes stemmed from two misunderstood ideas and one real issue with Microsoft Word's comparison result documents. First, tracked changes were considered “bad” because they contained metadata. The concern over metadata, such as the author, date and time tracked within the changes, was easily taken care of back in Microsoft Word 97 (SR2 '99) with the “Remove Personal Information” setting.

The second misconception was that Track Changes is inaccurate and easily corrupted the document. The reality is that if Tracked Changes is turned on during the editing process, it is extremely accurate. As far as corrupting a document, I believe that rumor was started by vendors who wanted to sell “fix the document” products, when the real culprit was not using Microsoft Word best practices; for example using direct formatting and not Styles, or reusing 1000-year-old documents that had been converted to Microsoft Word.

The primary feature where Word fell short was during document comparison. When comparing two documents, the result document (Track Changes) often wasn't what the attorney expected. Whole paragraphs were deleted when only a single word was removed. Changes were shown that weren't made and large complex documents often caused Word to crash. This caused many firms to purchase alternative document comparison applications.

When Word 2003 was released, Microsoft fixed many of the problems with comparison result documents. This was about the time that law firms began considering using Word as their sole comparison tool.

A Quick Review:
What Are Tracked Changes?

Tracked changes are known as redlines. Traditionally, some industries drew a vertical red line in the margin to show that some text had been changed.

The Microsoft Word Track Change feature visually shows the changes made to a document. Tracked changes are used in two ways. First, they enable Microsoft Word to track the revisions made to a document during editing by allowing changes to be made to a document as they are typed, without losing the original text. Second, when comparing two versions of a document, the results are shown as tracked changes. In each of these cases, the revisions are distinguished by being a different color from the original text and can be easily reviewed, accepted or rejected. (See Figure 1, below.)

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Word 2007's Improvements

With the release of Word 2007, Microsoft has made significant improvements to both the user interface and the internal engine of Word's Compare and Track Change features. I feel these changes are compelling enough for firms to consider using Microsoft Word 2007 singularly as their comparison platform. There are four major areas of improvement; Review ribbon, Words Compare dialog box, the accuracy of the comparison engine and improved author control.

Ribbon Overview

The new Review Tab in Word 2007's Ribbon is a big improvement over previous versions of Word. The buttons make more sense and features that were buried in the old Word toolbar are more accessible. Some of the most significant changes within the Review ribbon can be found in the Tracking, Changes, Compare and Protect groups.

The Tracking Group has the following buttons that control the way tracked changes are displayed.

The Track Changes button switches tracking on or off. When on, all changes made to the document ' including insertions, deletions, moves and formatting changes ' will be tracked.

The Balloons button allows the user to select how to show revisions in the documents. Revisions can be shown as balloons in the margins or directly within the document.

The Display for Review drop-down list provides different options for viewing the changes in a document. The four options can be confusing though, so understanding each helps in deciding which one to use:

• Final Showing Markup. Shows the final text with all the track changes displayed.
• Final. Shows the final version as if all tracked changes have been accepted. Beware, this view hides the tracked changes but they are still contained in the document.
• Original Showing Markup. Requires Balloons to be turned on and shows all the suggested insertions in balloons and suggested deletions within the text.
• Original. Shows the original version without tracked changes displayed. This view is as if all tracked changes have been rejected. Beware, this view hides the tracked changes but they are still contained in the document.

The Show Markup drop-down list lets the user select what kind of markup to show in the document. Comments, insertions and deletions, formatting changes and other kinds of markup can be switched on or off. Remember, only the display is switched on or off. The mark-ups are still in the document until they are accepted or rejected.

The Reviewing Pane drop-down list shows revisions in a separate windowpane.

Within the Changes Group are the Accept, Reject, Previous and Next buttons. The Accept and Reject buttons accept or reject the current revision and move to the next revision. The Previous and Next buttons navigate to the previous or next revision.

The Compare Group consists of the Compare and the Show Source Documents button.

The Compare button provides access to the Compare or Combine dialog boxes to compare two or more versions of a document. The Show Source Documents button allows users to choose which source documents to show, the original document, the revised document or both.

The Protect Group consists of the Protect Document button, which can be used to restrict users from making editing or formatting changes to a document by protecting it with a password.

Word's Compare Documents Dialog Box

In previous versions of Microsoft Word, there was no comparison dialog box for comparing two documents and you almost had to be a rocket scientist to use the comparison feature. The new dialog box (see Figure 2 below) is more convenient, easy to understand and is on par with stand-alone comparison products. The new dialog box allows the user to control different comparison elements, such as not comparing footnotes and moves, and to set the comparison granularity.

Accurate Comparison Engine

In Word 2007, Microsoft has significantly improved the accuracy of its comparison engine. The accuracy is so greatly improved that it appears to me, as a developer, that Microsoft completely rewrote this part of Word. This change alone, in my opinion, is the most significant improvement to Microsoft Word.

In addition to accuracy, Word 2007 adds two levels of comparison granularity: Compare changes at the character or word level. A character-level change occurs when changes are made to a few characters of a word, such as a case change. At the word level, the entire word is shown as a revision. It is often easier to work at the word level when dealing with changes such as you and your. Word shows the change as a word change instead of the single “r” as inserted. In previous versions of Word, you could not do this.

Improved Author Control

The result document from a Word 2007 comparison will be a Track Changes document with the revision author, date and time embedded in each revision. Word 2007 has made it possible to control the user name and the revision author by changing the Label changes with value (see Figure 2, below). In previous versions of Word, you could not do this.

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Word 2007's Document Comparison Shortcomings for Law Firms

Although Microsoft Word 2007 is greatly improved for document comparison, there are still features that are not available. Many firms may be reluctant to go without their “outside application” regardless of the cost benefit of using Word 2007 exclusively. Below is a list of those shortcomings that have to be considered before switching to Word exclusively:

• DMS integration. Word 2007 does not provide built-in document management integration for document comparison. This one shortcoming alone may be the reason firms decide not to go with Word 2007 as their exclusive document comparison platform.
• Track change options fidelity. Tracked changes are user-specific and not document-specific. In other words, how a result document appears on one user's machine may look completely different on another's. This can make collaboration between two parties difficult. To overcome this, the tracking options on both machines have to be the same.
• Reporting features. Word 2007 falls short on the ability to create revision statistics for the result document.
• Create a three-way view at any time. Even though Word 2007 now provides a way to create a tri-view of the original, revised and result documents, this is a temporary state and can only be accomplished immediately after the documents have been compared. Once the result document is closed and re-opened, the tri-view is not possible.
• Different comparison schemes. There is no way for firms to save and use different comparison schemes. Schemes provide different settings for comparison elements and the “look and feel” for deleted, inserted, formatted and moved revisions.
• Handling legacy result documents. If a firm decides to use Word 2007 as its exclusive document comparison platform, all the result documents from the previous comparison product are frozen and repurposing is nearly impossible. It would be significant if Word could repurpose these legacy result documents into clean Track Change documents.
• e-Mail ' Result, original and revised. Word can only e-mail the active document through its “Send” command.
• Print revised pages. Word cannot selectively print the pages that contain revisions.

Conclusion

With Word 2007, firms now have a viable option to lower their desktop software costs by foregoing the investment in outside the application document comparison products. Word 2007 now provides many features that were either poorly designed or absent in previous versions.

Before a firm decides to use Word 2007 as its exclusive document comparison platform, it must inventory those features that the firm has come to expect and depend on in its environment and decide if now is the time to give them up.