Comparing and Combining Documents
The document review scenario has been significantly improved in Word 2007. It's pretty straightforward and powerful technology once you have the basic idea.
So let's start with getting a grasp around the difference between Word's two document review options: compare and combine. While they both tell you what changed in a document, there is a fundamental difference in the end goal they were each designed for. Compare tells you what changed where as combine tells you who changed what.
This enables two fundamental document review scenarios:
- Compare: You send Joe a document. You know Joe was the only one making changes and therefore all you care about is exactly what he was messing around with. You compare the two documents. (General scenario = You want to know the differences between two documents)
- Combine: You send a document to 10 people. You need to know exactly who did what because some people's opinions matter more than others. You combine documents. (General scenario = You want to know the differences between documents and who changed what.)
Note: The 'version' related buttons in screen shot above is feature of Word 2007 that becomes available when working with documents stored on SharePoint 2007. They allow you to easily see what's changed between versions of the document saved on SharePoint.
Details
Continuing these scenarios, once you've decided what you want to do and click Compare or Combine, you are provided with a detailed set of options for what you want to see or track.
The 'Label changes with' box enables you to change the name that will be attributed to the revisions (imagine that your assistant is the one working with the document but you want the changes attributed to you) and the rest of the dialog enables you ignore or track a myriad of Word constructs (all those checkboxes), specify the granularity of revisions ('Show changes at'), and the context of the changes ('Show changes in').
Result
After you click OK, you see a tri-pane view that shows the resulting document along with the source documents. A 'reviewing pane' can also be used to show all the differences between the two documents in a simple summary view. All views scroll synchronously. I.e. You scroll in the middle pane, and the other two panes scroll accordingly. You can then accept or reject changes in the resulting document and get on with your day.
The new Tri-pane review panel of Office Word 2007 (Compare )
(Combine showing attributed changes)
This is the basic idea but if you play around there is even more goodness.
-Reed and Jonathan
