Compare Documents - Word won't compare entire document

[Aron]

[Aron]

I am trying to compare two fairly similar documents using the
Tools --> Track Changes --> Compare Documents feature,
but when I do this, Word compares the first 5.5 pages or so and
ignores the remaining 22 pages. There seems to be nothing special
about the point where it stops comparing the two documents, other
than it is at the end of a paragraph -- in one paragraph, all the
changes are highlighted, and in the next, none are.

I've tried doing this in Word for X running Jaguar, and I also tried it
using Word 2001 for Mac OS 9.1, and I got the exact same result -- it
stopped comparing documents in exactly the same place.

Any ideas on why this might be, and what I might be able to do to fix
this problem? (I guess I can always split up the file into multiple
shorter files, but I'd prefer a real solution.)

Thanks,
Aron

[Dayo Mitchell]

Hi Aron,

Click ś on the standard toolbar to Show NonPrinting Characters. The ś at
the end of each paragraph (and especially at the end of a section or
document) holds a lot of formatting. It sounds like the ś at the end of this
one para may have become corrupted--try cutting and pasting the text
*without* the marker. You may need to copy the doc into a new file in
pieces.

Dayo

[John McGhie]

Hi Aron:

That document is corrupt at the point where the Compare is failing.

Word 2001/X have the old document compare engine in which is rather
unforgiving of problems in the document.

You may be able to fix it by Accepting all Changes in both documents before
running the compare. If that doesn't fix it, it's a bad paragraph or a bad
table.

1) Save each document as a "Web Page"

2) Close Each Document

3) Re-open the web page version

4) Save again as a Document under a new file name.

This maneuver rebuilds the internal structure of the documents. They should
be OK then. Note: It is essential to save as "Web Page" not "Web Page
(Filtered)" in step 1. The Filtered version does not save enough
information to rebuild a Word Document from.

You should also be aware that the old compare engine doesn;t really have
much power: there are documents it simply can't complete a compare on
because the changes are too complex. Any changes in a table, and fields
that contain more than 750 characters, any complex sets of tracked changes
will cause this problem.

The next version of Word (2004) is very substantially improved in this
regard.

In the meantime, if you still can't get the compare to complete, save each
of the documents as Plain Text, then compare the plain text versions. This
will show you exactly where the changes are in the text, and you can use
Find to locate the spot in the original documents.

I do a lot of this with older versions of Word: it's the only way to Compare
two large and complex documents in Word 2000/20001 and earlier.

Hope this helps

On 22/1/04 9:37 PM, in article 1ca501c3e0d3$b1d95f00$a301...@phx.gbl,

[Rick McCormack]

On 1/22/04 2:37 AM, in article 1ca501c3e0d3$b1d95f00$a301...@phx.gbl,
"Aron" <anon...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

One idea: are you using styles in the document? If so, go to the area where
the compare quits, and check that you assigned a language to the style you
are using. (Styles-Modify-format-language) If you haven't assigned a
language, spelling and proofing don't work - and maybe it affects the
compare function also.

[John McGhie [MVP - Word]]

Hi Aron:

The actual cause is a design limitation in the compare document mechanism.
It has been replaced, but we haven't yet got the new version in Word X on
the Mac (coming in 2004).

There are two things it can't work around: one is a field where the result
exceeds 750 characters (e.g. A Table of Contents) and the other is certain
forms of document corruption. Often: stranded tracked changes or vast
EndNote fields inserted by EndNote.

However, I have usually found that any document containing tables won't
compare properly: the previous mechanism was pretty flaky.

What I normally do is save both the "Before" and "After" documents to plain
text files, then compare those. Compare will then work perfectly, and you
can refer to the plain text version to see where your changes are, then go
back to the originals to work on them.

This utility is vastly improved in Word 2004: it will even mark changes
within tables now :-)

Rick is quite correct that the wrong language disables proofing tools, but
that's not what's happening here, so assigning a language to your styles
will not affect this. This is caused by a piece of document that is too
complicated for Compare Documents to read, and only simplifying the document
code (i.e. Saving to plain text) will work around the problem.

Personally, I advise avoiding assigning a language to your styles if you
can: assuming you are working in English, assigning languages causes too
many unforseen problems when you start cutting and pasting, because there
are 29 different flavours of English. I sometimes have to do this: as a
technical writer it is important to me to know whether I am writing in
American English or United Kingdom English or Australian English: each
customer has very specific requirements in this matter. But I can tell you,
the maintenance of all those styles and dictionaries becomes a pain, so I
recommend that you should avoid it if you can.

Cheers

This responds to article <1ca501c3e0d3$b1d95f00$a301...@phx.gbl>, from
"Aron" <anon...@discussions.microsoft.com> on 22/1/04 9:37 PM:

--

Please respond only to the newsgroup to preserve the thread.

John McGhie, Consultant Technical Writer,
McGhie Information Engineering Pty Ltd
Sydney, Australia. GMT + 10 Hrs
+61 4 1209 1410, mailto:jo...@mcghie.name