Comparing and Combining Documents

re: Comparing and Combining Documents

Alex — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 04:48:09 GMT

This has always been a mystery to me. I send a docx to A and B. Both edited and I combine. How then could Word tell whether a paragraph is added by A or deleted by B? Yet a handful of experiements show that apparently Word can really distinguish between the two...

re: Comparing and Combining Documents

Mona — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:17:08 GMT

Well, you say “Combine: You send a document to 10 people. You need to know exactly who did what”. But I don’t understand how can I combine 10 documents, while the Combine Documents dialog box enables me to open only two (original & revised)?

Thanks a lot

Mona

re: Comparing and Combining Documents

wrdblog — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:36:49 GMT

Great question Mona. You are correct, the combine dialog only allows you to combine two documents. In the ‘send the document to 10 people scenario’ you can use combine to on the first two versions you get back, save the “Combined Document”, and then combine that combined document with the third version you get back…and so on until the 10th version is combined.

-Jonathan (MS)

re: Comparing and Combining Documents

dmahugh — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:37:35 GMT

@Alex, this post explains the magic that allows Word to know which changes came from which editing session:

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/12/11/what-s-up-with-all-those-rsids.aspx

If you're tracking changes when you edit, then there's even more information included in the XML stream, including the user name and a timestamp.

re: Comparing and Combining Documents

Richard — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:44:54 GMT

You say "The 'version' related buttons in screen shot above is feature of Word 2007 that becomes available when working with documents stored on SharePoint 2007." is there a way to get this fuctionality without SharePoint, I would like to be able to make changes to a document and keep different versions, as you could in 2003, is that possible in 2007?

re: Comparing and Combining Documents

wrdblog — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:44:42 GMT

Hi Richard – Unfortunately not. We removed Word’s versioning feature in the 2007 edition.

Checkout the following link for more info: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA102193321033.aspx?pid=CH100626291033

-Jonathan(MS)

Advanced Comparison of Word Documents

The Microsoft Office Word Team's Blog — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:27:45 GMT

With mortgage rates dipping as low as 4.5%, my fiancée and I have been doing a bit of refinancing comparison