MS Word - Compare and Merge Documents

August 11, 2009 8:26 AM

My company has decided to change our style guidelines to use straight quotes rather than smart quotes. We frequently run document comparisons of revised documents. Is there a way to stop the quotes from showing up as a revision when we compare versions of a document?

I turned off the setting for tracking formatting changes but that didn't work.

posted by thewalrusispaul to computers & internet (6 answers total)

What version of Word are you using? Have you tried Preferences > Output and Sharing > Track Changes > Changed Formatting > (none)? Are you using Auto Correct to change from smart quotes to straight quotes?
posted by mattbucher at 8:34 AM on August 11, 2009

I don't know what version of Word you're using, but in 2003 if you "accept all changes" when you're done it won't show as a revision. Just make sure that when you're changing the quotes, you don't make any other revisions that need to be approved before they are accepted.
posted by Kimberly at 8:38 AM on August 11, 2009

We are using Word 2003 and we are using auto correct to make the changes. We unchecked the change to smart quote option and then used the replace all command to replace all smart quotes with straight quotes.

Matt - That is exactly what I tried to do. No luck there.

Kimberly - We don't always compare documents to prior versions sometimes we compare them to separate but similar documents to compare alternate wordings. These come back full of redlines due to the format changes not due to actual wording variance.
posted by thewalrusispaul at 11:53 AM on August 11, 2009

Can you use a tool like araxis merge? That has the capability of running documents through custom filters prior to comparison.
posted by Cogito at 12:19 PM on August 11, 2009

We use Deltaview for our redlines, and this is an option.

I also recommend DocX Tools if you need to do a global smart to straight or straight to smart change.
posted by Sheppagus at 12:37 PM on August 11, 2009

Would love to know this too. Sheppagus, where's that option in Deltaview? I can't find it. Otherwise, I don't know if it's possible -- I think they are different characters, not just styles/formatting.
posted by odin53 at 2:29 PM on August 11, 2009