Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 9661
Use margins to track changes
Last modified: 2017-05-20 10:45:15 UTC
The revisions tool in Word XP places all comments, deletions, and formatting changes in the margins (with the Print View enabled) in text balloons with pointers to the relevent are in the document. Each text balloon is colored differently for each author and type of change. Since deletions are removed from the body of the document, the impact of changes on pagination and document length can easily be determined.
Reassigned to Bettina.
Please try using the latest OpenOffice 1.1 Final , you can download it from www.openoffice.org many bug fixes and enhancements since your version and 1.1 Final . If the problem still happend in 1.1 please report back It maybe not yet solve your Issue, but it worth to try.
In OOo 1.1.0 note that > Edit > Changes > Record does this already. Will close this as fixed with OOo 1.1.0. If this doesn't meet your requirements please feel free to reopen this Issue.
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Running 1.1.0, I still do not see the behavior I originally described. When turing on the record changes mode, all deletions are represented by crossed-out text when view changes is selected. When view changes is not selected, the changes are not displayed at all. The enhancement I am referring to would place all deletions in the margins when view changes is enabled (or possibly disabled). This allows one to view the deletions and see how they affect the actual layout of the document (since the deleted text no longer is in the body of the text). Additionally, in Word XP, when the text is placed into the margins, it is placed inside colored text balloons, where the color represents the person who made the changes.
I see. Sorry, I obviously didn't read your first posting carefully enough. Will set to New now. Thanks for reporting.
It would be nice to see this implemented. Seems to be the single feature that discourages my friend Lisa to make a decisive switch from Word to OOo and/or Linux.
*** Issue 50203 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Please see http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=103662#103662 for my comments on this issue. In summary: I'm personally more interested in Writer better emulating MS Word's "Comment" feature with its "Note" feature, than the other issues identified in the comments here, but would also welcome the other enhancements. Much warmth, planetthoughtful
I was just sent this way out of another discussion on this exact topic (http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?p=128943#128943). Short version: I and quite a few teachers and students have some very practical reasons to have this kind of margin functionality. I teach writing courses at the University of Virginia. Since printing costs recently became prohibitive here, students e-mail me drafts. I make comments and propose changes on the draft and e-mail it back. I get upwards of 50 essays a semester, and I'm one of maybe 30-some teachers teaching this course alone. Notes and changes in the margins are much more intuitive because this is they way we mark hard copies. And with Office 12 on the horizon, and in two years new operating system upgrades, OOo will be a much more attractive alternative --if it's as functional as what the students and teachers are already using. So I for one (and I know a number of other teachers) really want to see this happen.
I would vote for this if I had any votes left. So I raise the prio to P4. And I am sure, we can do better than M$Office.
I am also a faculty member who uses Linux and OO.o and hates the current Notes implementation. It is the only thing in MS Word that I truly miss. I have a lot of 30+ page papers to grade each semester, and not wanting to strain my back or kill trees, I do it electronically. The MS Word bubble in the margin is ideal. The OO.o system with the little box in the text just doesn't cut it. One of my colleagues has told me that it is the one thing keeping him from dumping MS Word and using OO.o.
I have to agree that the Writer editing tools need an overhaul. They were the thing that most made me reluctant to ditch word and, while I finally decided to put up with them, I really would like to see them improved. To begin with, the method for accepting/rejecting changes on a case by case basis is really cumbersome when compared with Word. That box that opens up with the changes listed by time is, so far as I can see, utterly pointless. Why use that, when it is simply better to scroll through the document? Secondly, the insert comments feature just doesnt cut the mustard -there also appear to be problems with comment visibility if the document is then opened in Word. I do a lot of proof-reading work and 99.9% of my clients use Word - I need the integration to be seemless because otherwise it looks woefully unprofessional. When I insert a comment, I don't want a little box in the text -I want it in the margin. Also, when I select a comment to apply to a peice of text, I don't want the original text to be invisible when my client opens it in Word (which has just happened). Finally, I think that the text crossing out feature when you delete text may have its uses but most of the time it simply makes the document hard to navigate and requires me to do a second pass with the changes turned off. This allows me to do a final edit but it takes for ever to delete anything this way. Overall, I think OOo is excellent and I don't want to be so negative -but text reviewing tools are very important to me (and to many others I'm sure) -and I don't want to be yearning for Word anymore. Thanks, David
I have been a keen supporter of OpenOffice for a while and install OO by default on my own and other peoples machines. The only limitation that has been a 'show stopper' for people is the track changes compatibility with Microsoft Word. They want to be able to see notes in the margin. I realise now that Navigator (push F5 to show Navigator) goes some way to address this but not far enough.
*** Issue 78027 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Firstly, well done with OOo I think it is great tool. I, for one, appreciate all that has been achieved. I have moved away from MS Word and standardised using OOo on all of our home systems. However, I'm getting major grief from my partner. She is a writer/editor and this is a major feature that she uses at work in Word. I think I will be forced to reinstate MS Word or maybe first look at one of the Open Source products. Summary: 1) changes to appear in a balloon/side what has been inserted/deleted/changed 2) Comments added to changes/insertions/deletions to appear on the side 3) Comments to be possible to be added to non-changed sections. Important to highlight to some about a query on the word/sentence/paragraph 4) Comments and changes to visible in printed documents. Controllable. 5) Comments and changes to be visible if exported to PDF or other. 6) Different colours for different authors (low priority for me) I notice this feature request has been around since 1.0.1 from 2002. This feature request still applies to version 2.2.1. Please up the priority and this key functionality. Regards
I'll add a comment on the following to cross reference it to this. 26305 Commenting grayed out for track changes
I work at a law firm and am trying to get our lawyers to make the move to OpenOffice. Most issues have been resolved except this one where track changes in balloons is an ESSENTIAL feature which I feel should have never been left out. The balloons feature allows collaboration between multiple authors a lot easier to track since it says who did it rather than just different colours for different authors and requiring you to look at the markup one by one instead of just glancing through. Would really really appreciate this to be implemented.
Hi Mathias, I have changed the current owner to your owner. Please take the ownership of these enhancements.
I will add my penny to the discussion. To me also this is a key feature. (1) The changes in Writer should be displayed on the margin, so that the layout of the document is not messed up. There could be an option in preferences, how do you like your changes displayed. I bet 99% of people would like them on the margin. (2) Dedicated toolbar for change tracking with buttons to accept/reject and to filter the contents by user/time/etc. (3) Get rid of this nasty dialog box at all! The changes and the effect of filtering should be shown in the document directly.
Hi, even though this is redundant, I'd like to add my comment to underline how essential this feature request is: For me, the poor visualisation of changes in OOo is the only reason why I still use MS Office 2003 in CrossOver Office. I sincerely hope that this feature will be implemented in OOo 3, as this will allow me to finally abandon MS Office for good!
I hope for this feature! Thanx in advance! For me, (besides notes on the margins), this is the only reason, why I need to use Word at work.
*** Issue 86780 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I do not quite understand why this has not been fixed during all this time. I deal with 200 pages documents with multiple editors and showing changes makes the document absolutely unreadable even between a single revision. The only acceptable way to show to readers where they should focuss when reading the new version would be this change marks on the marging. Even latex does do that!
I've read through the comments and what I ask is just the ability to be able to select Option->open office writer-> change in a first step. None for addition Hide for deletion <------------- None for changed attribute Mark for line changed
I've read through the comments and what I ask is just the ability to be able to select Option->open office writer-> change in a first step. None for addition Hide for deletion <------------- None for changed attribute Mark for line changed Then I do not understand why it is flaged P4 instead of P3 given the comment of the people.
*** Issue 92597 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Is there a possibility that this essential feature will be considered for OpenOffice.org 3.2? Thank you!
We have even considered it for 3.1 but we discovered so many unsolved technical and usability problems that we decided to give it more time for thinking.
Like others who have commented, I use this feature a lot for proof reading, and I think that the comments in the margin in OO3 are a great improvement. However, I am concerned that if all changes are put in the margin I will have serious space problems in the margin. Some of the stuff I have to read will have a average of one or more changes per line, and at times even the comments end up squashed, let alone all the other changes. If what people are suggesting is implemented, there has to be either some way of dealing with over-full margins, or a option to have additions/deletions marked as they currently are (ie not in the margin).
@mba: Do you need early testers or conceptual comments on usability problems on this issue. If this is the case, feel free to approach me. Is there public discussion (e.g. in the wiki) or brainstorming going on on how to implement "Use margins to track changes"? I would appreciate this. I extensively use this feature in MS Word and since we are working on documents in teams between (3-8 people), I cannot convince any of them to use Writer due to this issue. On the other hand, the implementation in MS Word has severe restrictions, i.e. by having more than 3 collaborators. To do it better than Word, it would be great to have something like filters: "Do not display any changes made earlier than my last review of the document" or "Do not display changes that are older than xx days" or "Do not display changes of person xy and person xz, because I trust them very much" By the way, what does "more time for thinking" mean? Do you plan to have it ready for 3.2 or does it take longer? Best regards, Gerald
When thinking about the feature we discovered a lot of problems that would make users unhappy. If we invested the time to implement this, it shouldn't be something incomplete or something that works only if you don't have more than a certain number of comments/changes or authors. For now we don't have a fixed date or release (as the still missing target milestone reflects). Before knowing what you want to do it doesn't make sense to set a target. For now we didn't start a discussion about it, perhaps we could start it by summing up the existing thoughts and ideas somewhere in the wiki.
In order to sum up existing thoughts and ideas, I started a wiki page on the Track Changes feature: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Track_changes Feel free to make additions to the page.
Thanks for the interesting compilation. As you compared with Word: AFAIK Word also allows to display deleted text "inline" as we are doing it in Writer by default now. If we decided to remove that feature from Writer, things would become much easier.
@mba: In my opinion, the way to display deleted text "inline" is almost always inferior to the other way displaying it in the margins. Hence, I wouldn't care if that feature would be removed from OpenWriter. I don't know, if there is any use case where displaying deleted text "inline" has an advantage? Since this feature is probably the most important one, why I cannot convince some colleagues to use OpenOffice.org, I would like to ask, whether this feature is on track for release 3.3?
*** Issue 112177 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
I am a freelance editor and require a fully functional equivalent to track changes. I tried briefly to go it alone with OO when I got a new, linux'd computer, but it just didn't fly for my work. This was the one and only lacking feature that led me, with great regrets, to plunk money down to install Windows and Microsoft Office. So I strongly echo all the other similar comments that this is a vital feature that needs extensive improving before I can return to OO. For my uses, a replica of Word's functionality in Track Changes is what I'm most eager to see. @gleppert re: inline display... in almost all cases I'd agree with you that displaying changes in the margins is superior to displaying them inline, however I have encountered situations where I found it easier to work with a changed document with inline display. As that function already more or less exists in OO, I don't see a reason to take it out; indeed, I see reason to retain it.
Sending a ping towards the OpenOffice developers. Is this feature planned / in the making for OpenOffice 3.4? Me and apparently many others who collaborate with other people in writing would appreciate this feature.
As a follow up, I don't see why this issue has a priority of only P4 rather than P3. After all, as the specs for P3 go, this issue represents "non-trivial problems which probably affect a noticeable number of users" and fits with the example bullet point "Functionality which is not available, but a workaround exists".
The inability to show edits in margins, as Word does, is the one feature that is preventing my wife, who does a lot of writing and editing, from transferring over OO. As she loathes the latest iterations of Office, I really need this to be solved before Office2003 ceases to be viable.
It would be nice if track changes will also be introduced here. I am certain that a lot of folks will appreciate if track changes will be available here soon.
This feature as currently implemented is virtually unuseable. If I make multiple changes I can no longer tell what my layout will be, and any small changes within words rather than whole word strike-throughs or additions make the individual words unreadable.
Reset the assignee to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".