When I work for a customer, can happen that I use a document as “template” to build a new one (copy –> paste –> rename –> delete some chapter and start writing).

I know that this is not the best way to proceed but, sometimes I find this procedure very quick a practical.

Side effect of this behavior is that the “revision number” of the new document continue to grow starting from the revision number of the previous document.

Well, I cant find on internet a quick way to reset this number and the solution provided by http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2008/01/09/how-can-i-reset-the-revision-number-of-a-word-document-to-1.aspx looks to complex for me:-)

…BTW it doesn’t allow to set revision number to a specific value different than “1”.

Yesterday I just realized that now the Word format is “open” and “human readable” so after some test, I discovered the following solution:

  1. The .docx file is simply a .zip file, this means that if you rename it to .zip, you can open it with WinZip, WinRar and so on
  2. Rename .docx to .zip and open the file with your preferred archive editor
  3. Open the file \docProps\core.xml
  4. Search for “<cp:revision>xxx</cp:revision>” where “xxx” is the actual revision number
  5. Change xxx with your favorite new number
  6. Save the file core.xml into your zip again
  7. Rename .zip back to .docx

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