Track Changes function thinks I'm two people

Josh

Thanks, those answers help, even if just to keep us from barking up the wrong tree.

My next question:

Are these documents stored on your hard drive, or on a network or SharePoint site?

Also, are you using technology like Microsoft's Active Directory?

Meira

Sorry, I missed that, I have re-reread the thread and I see how your problem differs.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but is that not the cause of your problem--Word 2003 (*.doc) documents?

Does this problem occur in all the *.doc files you work with, and not in any of the *.docx files?

that would make sense, because Microsoft made some big changes in how track changes are handled in Word 2013, and these rely on the xml format of the new versions of Word. So there would be no "place" to store that information in the old *.doc files.

try this. Take one of those *.doc files that is giving you problems, make a copy of it, then take the copy and update it to the Word 2013 format (File|Info|Convert). Then try editing, saving & closing, re-opening and editing further. Does that solve the issue?

Jacques -

Thanks so much for looking into this. I will look into your solutions later this afternoon, but I wanted to respond to some of your questions first.

Was this document reviewed on different machines? - NO. I've only worked on this document on my work issued laptop.

Was it reviewed using different logins? - NO. I log into my work computer/system the same way every day.

I have not changed my name in the properties setting for Word, so I'm not sure how/why track changes is coming up with several slight variations.

I also have not been able to discern a consistent pattern. For example, I was editing a document yesterday, and within the span of about 20 minutes track changes had me listed 4 different times with four different colors. I may have saved the document during that period, but I did not close out of it. But, when I did close and reopen the document, track changes only had me listed twice rather than 4 different times.

For the document that I sent you, it got so bad that I had to give up on track changes completely. I ended up accepting all changes, and will do a Word document compare and a deltaview compare before I send to my colleagues for their review. With that document, I save a new version of the document each day that I work on it.

Similar to Meira, however, my problems did not start until my firm switched to Word 2013 in December. I don't recall if this started immediately after the switch to Word 2013, but I definitely never had this problem before.

Also, I don't seem to have this problem with documents that I create - only documents that I edit that were created by someone else.

As an additional data point, I finally called my firm's help line yesterday to see if they had a solution. The guy in tech support never heard of the problem, so he routed me to my local tech support (my firm has about 10,000 US employees). My local guy also hadn't heard of the problem. He suggested making sure that I shut down my computer every day (as opposed to putting it to sleep), but that has not helped. He said the next course of action would be for him to escalate the problem to one of my firm's contacts at Microsoft.

Hi Jacques,

Thanks for tackling this. As you'll see if you read my earlier posts, my problem is not the same as Josh's. In my case, my changes appear to have been produced by one reviewer in that they show up in the same color and under my name after I save and close. But when I'm working on the document, it nonetheless treats each round of editing as though I were a different reviewer, in that if I make changes to text that I previously edited it tracks those changes, rather than simply deleting or changing the edited text. You can see this in my document by reading what I wrote after Round 2, Round 3, etc. The upshot is that unless I use 'reject change' instead of simply deleting or overwriting text, my clients end up with a confusing morass of edits instead of the final product. 

Re your comment that my document is a Word 2003 doc - that's because this problem only happens in documents created from the older versions of Word. The problem began when I switched from Word 2010 to Word 2013. Before the switch I never had an issue. (NB

• I am an editor, so I never work on documents that I create - only documents that are sent to me by my clients.)

Thanks,

Meira

Hi Meira and Josh

Meira, I also only see one reviewer in your document.

Also, your document is a Word 2003 version document.

Could you perhaps try to generate one where the reviewer is listed multiple times when you click on Show Markup, Reviewer?

Josh, your document was quite useful.

I don't have the cause as yet, but we will work on that (tomorrow, as it is almost closing time for me here). But I do have information and a solution! :-)

Firstly, the file contain person information for three people:

"Josh Kaplan"

"Josh Kaplan [2]"

"Josh Kaplan " (note the extra space).

Was this document reviewed on different machines?

Was it reviewed using different logins?

All the information you can give me about how and when these "ghost" identities were created could help me get at the answer. Essentially, we want to get to the point where we can recreate the problem. Then we will know what is causing it.

As for the solution.

Several possibilities could be pursued, but since I put all the effort into my reauthoring tool [ :-) ], I thought I would give that a try first (http://insight.trueinsight.za.com/word/word-utilities).

Now here is something interesting. When I ran the tool in Word 2013, it picked up only two of the three identities. And it was slow.

When I ran it in Word 2010, it picked up all three. And it was fast.

I have ranted about this before (http://insight.trueinsight.za.com/archives/547) so I won't repeat that here.

Nonetheless, I ran it in Word 2010, replacing all three with only one.

The result is here:

http://1drv.ms/1IdA0sM

Now ideally, we would want to get at the cause of the problem, so that we don't have to symptomatically apply a solution every time. But we'll get there. At least now we have an interim solution while we work on the cause of the problem.

so, can you give me as much information as you can about this, and see if you can get it to recreate a duplicate identity, noting carefully what you did each time. That would really help.

I'll check for more information tomorrow then.