Tech: Removing Code and Correction

Subject: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 08:29 AM

Hey Word-Wizards!

I'm told that if I email a Word document, that all my corrections, rewrites -- basically anything I've gone through to create the document -- can be seen with just the click of a button.

I've also been told that there's a very simple way to clean up a document so that all the code, corrections, etc, will not be sent with the document.

Make sense? ...anyone tell me how to clean up a document before I send it?

Thanks

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: john f weldon
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 08:44 AM

Damn! Don't let the secret out! It used to be fun reading those things, that start...

"Dear Cherished Friend..."

...and find that and earlier version was...

"You Arsehole..."

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: treewind
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:04 AM

You can't.
And your computer reads your thoughts and sends them to Big Brother.
There's no escape.

Anahata

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: john f weldon
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:15 AM

Using Microsoft software is the road to ruin...

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:36 AM

"anyone tell me how to clean up a document before I send it?"

You can save it as RTF format, or better yet ASCII text - that usually strips all the crap out...

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: john f weldon
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:41 AM

...if yr saving in those formats, why use Word for starts? Any number of freebie Word processors can do that...

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 09:46 AM

You are catching on john.... :-)


Actually I usually detest people who email me large text documents in any format other than plain ASCII - and they are usually all idiots sending me SPAM.... :-P

Plain ASCII is much smaller and faster to send than Word doc files too...

There are very few text documents that contain REAL hard INFO that are improved by 'pretty print' such as Word... :-)

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: john f weldon
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 10:01 AM

Bravo! No more Microsoft overpriced Sewage-ware!

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: treewind
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 11:32 AM

Open Office
The sensible alternative if you need a WP (or spreadsheet, drawing package, Slideshow builder or even database). And it exports direct to PDF if you want it to.

And for mail and other text, ASCII roolz!

Anahata

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 12:37 PM

You can highlight and copy your document and paste it into a new document - that should remove any evidence of previous versions. Otherwise, save it in RTF or PDF or text format, as suggested above.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: John Hardly
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 12:46 PM

Thanks. Elegant solution.

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 03:04 PM

I often times compose in Word for the simple reason that it is the only program that offers me an emergency save if we have a power outage and I haven't manually saved it recently (or at all). It's a pain in the butt to have to recreate a document after a power blip.

To scrape off all of the Word nonsense I do "control A" and "control C" to select all then copy it, then "control V" to paste it into a notepad document. I can work with it from there to add to my html, etc. Or you could repeat that and pick up the document from notepad and drop it into a new Word file. As was said above, that leaves behind the formatting.

I don't think I an saving versions of my documents because I think you have to set it up to do that. You might poke around in the preferences to see what your program is set to do.

SRS

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 03:52 PM

The "secret stuff" that others can see - that articles of the kind cited are talking about - are the revision record and annotations commonly used when several people in a work group are passing the document back and forth, making revisions and editing changes to be routed for approval by others.

In order to have such "secret stuff" in a Word document, you must go to Tools|Track Revisions to turn on the identification of changes made by each person. If you have NOT TURNED ON "TRACK REVISIONS" in Tools, there is nothing for anyone to see.

(If you're not smart informed enough to know how to turn it off, you probably haven't turned it on so you have nothing to worry about.)

When turned on, entries made by each "reviewer" are shown in a different color. "Deletes" are shown by strikeout rather than being removed, and additions are shown in the "color" of the person who makes them.

A reader who opens the document and does not have "Track Revisions" turned on, and/or does not have the "Revisions" toolbar displayed, will usually see only the "latest version" although there are some "peculiarities" with the way a "tracked" document with lots of revs and notes displays. A person who receives what looks like a "clean" document can turn on the Revisions toolbar and step through all the changes that have been made since tracking was turned on. Reviewers may also have added notes/comments which will also be visible.

All that's required to remove all of this "history" is to click on the Revisions tool bar to go to the first change/note, and you should find an option to "Accept All" that will merge all prior changes and delete all the notes.

If several people have worked, in Rev Tracking mode, on the document, and have added "conflicting edits," this can make total garbage out of a perfectly good document; but unless you've "shared the job" of creating the document and have told Word to keep track of the changes there is no record of the revisions you've made in the document.

If you have not turned on "Track Revisions" there will be nothing for anyone to see in a new document that you have created "from scratch."

Go to View | Toolbars, and put a check beside the "Revisions" toolbar. You'll then see a (probably new) toolbar in the top bar with 7 buttons on it, most of which will probably be yellow, with blue arrows and stuff on them. The first couple of "arrow" buttons step forward and back from one "change" to the next. The button with the check mark on it is the one you click to accept a single change you or someone else has entered. You can click the roller arrow on this button to get the choice to "Accept All." Once you click that choice, there is NO RECORD OF THE PAST HISTORY OF THE CHANGES MADE IN THE DOCUMENT.

The sixth button from the left on my Revisions toolbar toggles "Track Changes" on or off. If Tracking is on, the button shows as "depressed."

At the left, there is a "Show" window where you can choose to show the Final, Final showing markup, Original showing markup, or the Original. The "Show" roller allows some selection of how the various markups are displayed.

An immensely handy and powerful tool for group preparation and review of a document. NONE OF WHAT IT TRACKS should ever be in a Word document unless someone turned on the tracking feature. One click on the "Accept All" button clears all of it out.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: robomatic
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 06:24 PM

In Microsoft Word I'm aware of two 'gotchas' where you might leak more than you wish. The first is the one above that JohnInKansas mentioned. The second occurs when the writer, YOU, selects a bunch of text and selects for it the option 'hidden text' which makes the text and the space it occupies vanish. This allows a writer to try alternate versions of a paragraph, a sentence, an expression, without leaving the document. Naturally, if you simply send a WORD document which is being worked on in this way, the alternate material is still part of it; this allows collaborators on a document to work 'together while apart'.

It is a powerful tool, and on occasions, a dangerous thing to forget.

The techniques of doing a cut and paste into a simpler format/ program will do the trick of making sure that nothing more than what's in front of you gets out. For formal documents, making it an image and faxing it makes it much much harder for the document to be altered after it leaves your domain.

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 08:52 PM

Since the change tracking is a very effective tool, all of the groups I've worked with have used it. Hidden text could possibly be used as described; but all the "experienced" Word user I've known always work in a "Show All" mode in which hidden text is visible - all the time - unless temporarily "turned off."

The reasons for using a viewing mode that "shows everything" while constructing a document is that it's the only way to tell whether an alignment is a tab, margin, outdent, indent, reformat, etc., or to see other "structural elements" that you need to know about in order to work efficiently within the document.

Using hidden text format in this way gives you no good way to "finalize" the document except by finding and deleting the unwanted versions using a style or format search, which would seem to be more of a manual thing if done by text format, but is done automatically using the Review toolbar.

Note also that Word (with nearly all printers) allows the option of printing hidden text and/or edits/corrections/comments. If you leave any of this stuff in a document that you send "out of org" you have no way of knowing what it will look like, or what it will print, for the recipient.

There are lots of options. The only requirement is that you understand the methods you - and your associates - choose to use.

John

Subject: RE: Tech: Removing Code and Correction
From: John Hardly
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 09:37 AM

Interesting stuff. Thanks for all the participation.