Track Changes function thinks I'm two people

Anonymous
2014-10-26T16:00:11+00:00

I am a copyeditor, which means I use the track changes function all the time. Since I switched to Word 2013 I've had a problem with some documents whereby after I close the document and open it again, the track changes function treats me as a new user. The problem with this is that I often go over any given bit of text several times, potentially making new changes each time, and when the system treats me as a new user, any earlier additions that I later delete show up in the margin as deleted text (rather than simply disappearing).  This is confusing for my clients, who only want to see my final changes and not the history of my train of thought. Of course, I can resolve the problem by rejecting the change instead of deleting the added text, but (a) I don't always remember to do that, and (b) this is still awkward, especially where I rewrite a given bit of text several times, making new additions and deletions each time. Can anyone advise as to how I can alert the system that when I return to a document, it should treat previous tracked changes as still active? I know there must be a way to do this because the problem only arises with some documents. I suppose there is something about the settings in the original document as it is sent to me that affects this, but for the life of me I can't figure out what that is. Thanks to anyone who can help!

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-05-04T16:03:14+00:00

    Has anyone had any luck with this issue? I just started editing a new document, and within the span of about 15 minutes track changes treated me as 3 different users. I've been having this problem in multiple documents regardless whether I work on the document for one day or multiple days. So frustrating!

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-02-06T21:27:45+00:00

    I certainly will MBen-Gad. Fingers crossed!

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-02-06T07:57:33+00:00

    TNEdit - if you manage to find a solution, please post it here! I've given up and have just trained myself to reject changes when I want to re-edit a given bit of text. At some point I will try to systematically identify differences between the documents where this happens and those where it doesn't. It's a pain having to spend work time trying to placate the elves in the computer!

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-02-05T21:38:25+00:00

    I'm having this same issue. It wants to show me as 3 different reviewers (first reviewer is my full name, second reviewer somehow became just my first name, and third reviewer is back to my full name). I've tried everything I've read on every thread I can find and nothing works. Unlike the original poster, my colours do not revert to original colour once saved, closed, and reopened.

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  5. Stefan Blom 352.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-01-13T22:47:44+00:00

    Sorry, I can't explain the issue. Either there is something about user names in Office 2013 that no one who has posted in this thread understands, or it's a bug. I don't know which at this time. :-(

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