Tracked Changes - Word 2008 Crashes
Mark Harris
We are having a heck of a time with a variety of word documents using
tracked changes - the program becomes unstable pretty quickly and crashes
when we use tracked changes. This really hinders collaboration. Has
Microsoft said anything about fixing this problem?
mark
MC
Mark Harris <mha...@toxstrategies.com> wrote:
Are you sure the problem is with Microsoft?
I use Track Changes all the time on documents that go back and forth
between OSX and Windows and have never experienced any instability.
--
"Don't water it down! You always water it down! Well, don't! Just don't!"
- Mary Albinson
John McGhie
Yes, they have.
The .docx format is the fix. The old .doc format is not stable enough to
use much tracking of changes, particularly if you are sending documents
cross-platform.
However, as Matt says, the problem is often the user, not the program. You
need to work carefully and neatly when editing with tracked changes on: if
you do not, document corruption is the inevitable result.
Personally, I prefer to edit without tracked changes, then use Compare
Documents to mark up the changes when I have finished editing. It's much
more reliable, particularly if you are going cross-platform with users who
are not trained in professional editing :-)
Cheers
On 7/07/09 9:28 AM, in article C677F2CB.4D22%mha...@toxstrategies.com,
"Mark Harris" <mha...@toxstrategies.com> wrote:
--
Don't wait for your answer, click here: http://www.word.mvps.org/
Please reply in the group. Please do NOT email me unless I ask you to.
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP, Word and Word:Mac
Sydney, Australia. mailto:jo...@mcghie.name
Mark Harris
copespaz-72EB33...@news.eternal-september.org, "MC"
<cope...@mapca.inter.net> wrote:
> In article <C677F2CB.4D22%mha...@toxstrategies.com>,
> Mark Harris <mha...@toxstrategies.com> wrote:
>
>> We are having a heck of a time with a variety of word documents using
>> tracked changes - the program becomes unstable pretty quickly and crashes
>> when we use tracked changes. This really hinders collaboration. Has
>> Microsoft said anything about fixing this problem?
>>
>> mark
>
> Are you sure the problem is with Microsoft?
>
> I use Track Changes all the time on documents that go back and forth
> between OSX and Windows and have never experienced any instability.
Pretty sure it is a word problem. Our firm uses MacBook Pros and Office 2008
and the problem is experienced by all users (at least 10 folks). Also, I
was at a scientific conference not long ago and a group of Mac users was
huddled together discussing the tracked changes stability issue (different
firms but all experiencing routine crashes with tracked changes) - pretty
sure it is an issue associated with Word 2008.
John McGhie
Yes, scientific text is almost certain to have problems, especially in .doc
format.
Anything containing tables, footnotes, cross-references, and equations is
practically guaranteed to give trouble.
Word 2007 is a lot better, but not perfect. We are hoping for an upgrade to
put the new change tracking engine into Mac Word at the next version.
We shall see...
Cheers
On 8/07/09 2:45 AM, in article C678E5D2.52D0%mha...@toxstrategies.com,
"Mark Harris" <mha...@toxstrategies.com> wrote:
--
John9999
One thing I noticed is that if you open the Word document directly from
Outlook, rather than saving it to your desktop, Word is much more prone to
crashing. I strongly recommend saving the file to your desktop before opening
it.
Also, when possi ble, I delete the unwanted figures and add a comment saying
I did that. To me, they seem to cause the most trouble.
Also, simply closing and reopening Word every 3 hours or so helps prevent
crashes.
I also off Track Changes before updating fields or printing, as I don't
usually need to track that information and it makes it easier to see the
changes I do need to track.
I have done detailed QC of the Compare Document results, and find that they
are not 100% reliable.
Good luck!
John
paul...@officeformac.com
>
I love when the solution is use older versions or avoid features. If the newer version does not work it should not be released...or at least sold. The same goes for wonky features. Either don't include 'em or give the whole thing away for free. (But really, the bullets feature, for example, has been wonky in word (starting on the PC and then on mac) since at least the mid-90s. How long should it take?)
Dealing with the ever-crashing word for Mac program (while using bullets, track changes, tables, typing my name, anything) has cost my small company endless hours and therefore $. Why is MS charging for this software?
I am not trying to be unconstructive, but I need to vent in a place that MS people might actually see it. And honestly, endless individual work-arounds are not the answer; a good functional product is.
John McGhie
send your comments to Microsoft.
Here, you are addressing ONLY fellow users. Microsoft does not read here,
and we don't need to hear about your troubles, we have enough of our own :-)
If you follow John's tips, you will start to have a much better experience.
Bullets was fixed in Word 2004, so if you are still having problems with the
feature, tell us what's happening and we will help you sort it out.
The first hint we will give you is "Apply your bullets using STYLES". If
you make that one simple change, your problems with Bullets should go away.
Do not allow anyone to change bullets in your documents using Format>Bullets
and Numbering. That's a "quick and dirty" method for documents you are
going to print and discard. It should never be used for documents you want
to keep, because it WILL break them :-)
Now: This thread is about "Tracked Changes", and the answer to Tracked
Changes problems is NOT "use an older version". Word 2007 is two
generations more up-to-date than Word 2008 in its change tracking mechanism,
and will provide a much more reliable result.
You are correct: products should not ship with bugs. And if we were
prepared to pay ten or twenty times the price, they wouldn't. There are
very few bugs in a Rolls Royce (which is why we derive such great
satisfaction when one 'fails to proceed'...).
But I can't afford a Rolls Royce. Nor can I afford a copy of Interleaf,
which last time I looked cost about $100,000 for the software licence,
$20,000 a year for the support, and $25,000 for the workstation. Quite
expensive to do the monthly report. But Interleaf doesn't have "bugs", it
has "limitations". So when it doesn't work, they get to say "Well we told
you it wouldn't do that..."
There! I needed to vent to :-)
Cheers
On 16/07/09 5:43 AM, in article 59b77...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"paul...@officeformac.com" <paul...@officeformac.com> wrote:
This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!
--
John McGhie, Microsoft MVP (Word, Mac Word), Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. | Ph: +61 (0)4 1209 1410
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:jo...@mcghie.name
John McGhie
Good comments... :-)
On 16/07/09 12:30 AM, in article
AF4758B8-4B36-41B1...@microsoft.com, "John9999"
<John...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> One thing I noticed is that if you open the Word document directly from
> Outlook, rather than saving it to your desktop, Word is much more prone to
> crashing. I strongly recommend saving the file to your desktop before opening
> it.
So do I: Anyone who opens ANYTHING directly from ANY email program will
lose their entire computer to a virus long before they have problems with
their Tracked Changes :-) That's just another name for suicide :-) (Yes:
That applies to Macs too, folks: even Apple quietly suggests we should be
running an antivirus these days...)
> Also, simply closing and reopening Word every 3 hours or so helps prevent
> crashes.
That's much more important with Word 2000/2003 under Windows XP. Word leaks
memory, and Windows doesn't clean it up until you quit Word. Under Mac OS,
Word will run about a month before it gets seriously slow and needs to be
restarted, because Mac OS is much more efficient about reclaiming memory.
On the other hand, anyone doing serious stuff in Word with less than 2GB of
RAM in the box is asking for problems. Always remember that Outlook runs a
hidden copy of Word for its email editor, so you need twice the RAM.
>
> I also off Track Changes before updating fields or printing, as I don't
> usually need to track that information and it makes it easier to see the
> changes I do need to track.
Very good advice!
>
> I have done detailed QC of the Compare Document results, and find that they
> are not 100% reliable.
They will be under Word 2007, provided that neither document contained
tracked changes before the compare was done. Word 2007 is much more
reliable with both Tracks and Compares. We're still waiting for that new
module over on the Mac side.
Cheers
John9999
I found your explanations for why Word behaves the way I noticed very
helpful.
I will now stop opening pdf attachments directly from emails. I hadn't
realized that increased the risk of viruses. So, I am glad you mentioned that.
I really appreciate your insights.
Best Regards,
John
Si...@officeformac.com
I have been battling with Mac 2008 crashing since I bought it about a month ago (I have updated to the latest version 12.1.9 but makes no difference). I work extensively exchanging documents (generally quite complex in terms of figures, tables and content; for example multiple text formats and fonts in the same document) between Macs and PCs. The documents do not need to be very large (1 MB is generally sufficient). Whether tracking changes is on or off makes little difference, Word hangs. This always happens when the original document is generated on a PC.
I have tried your suggestions on the following link:
<http://word.mvps.org/Mac/DocumentCorruption.html>
As I am using word 2008 I used procedure 2 as you suggest. However, when I tried to save the new document Word HUNG.
I also tried procedure 1 and found a new problem. All the text disappeared from the document.
However, I suggest that users when they open Word go into the preferences and select <spelling and grammar>. Then deselct the following: <check spelling as you type>; <always suggest correction>; <check grammar as you type>; and <check grammar with spelling>. Give an OK to the changes then you should be able to open and use your problematic PC word documents.
It's not a good fix to the problem as these functions are very useful. But really its shocking that Microsoft hasn't corrected this problem that was reported almost immediately after office 2008 was launched.
John McGhie
I do the same kind of work, and it's a month or two since I had a crash or a
hang ion Word 2008 (or 2004, for that matter...)
Would you like to zip up one of your problem documents and email it to me?
I'd like to take a look and see if I can see what's going wrong...
Cheers
On 16/07/09 11:41 AM, in article 59b77...@webcrossing.caR9absDaxw,
"Si...@officeformac.com" <Si...@officeformac.com> wrote:
> Dear John McGhie,
> I have been battling with Mac 2008 crashing since I bought it about a month
> ago (I have updated to the latest version 12.1.9 but makes no difference). I
Jonathan Duke
wrote:
I think they resolved a number of Track Changes/Compare bugs in 12.2.0
as I'm seeing increased reliability in those areas.
Give it try and post with your results.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Jon
John McGhie
Yes, that's my experience too.
However, some people are suffering major issues with PPTX and XLX files
created in early versions of Windows Office 2007.
Apparently, they won't open at all in Mac Office 2008 unless they are first
sent back to Windows Office and re-saved.
Cheers
On 28/07/09 6:08 AM, in article
newsgroups-CD200...@msnews.microsoft.com, "Jonathan Duke"
<newsg...@dukedesktop.com> wrote:
This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum