Word: Track changes reverts to "author"

[EdwardMartinIII]

We're using Word 2007. We each have (as far as I can tell) uniquely identified author tags as far as Word knows. We each have "Track Changes" set.

When I make changes, it identifies the change as coming from me.

The instant I SAVE the file, however, all of those changes revert to coming from AUTHOR, which means that by the time the doc gets to the end of the line of reviewers, no one knows who made what changes.

Is this normal behavior from Word 2007, or is there a way to fix this such that at the end of the line, the final reviewer knows who made what change?

Thanks!


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[macropod]

Hi Edward,

When you go to Word Options|Popular, what do you see as the User Name?

Cheers
Paul Edstein
[MS MVP - Word]

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

The user name is "Edward Martin III" and the initials are "em3".

When I first make the correction, it shows my user name properly.

When I save the file (CTRL-S) it changes to "Author."

By the end of the line, three of us have made changes, but no one knows which ones they can safely ignore without losing their jobs... er, I mean, no one's sure which corrections come from whom.


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[MakeItSo]

Most probably the option "remove personal information" is checked in the Word's "Save" options.

Don't have W2007 here right now, but it should be somewhere in the extended Word options, category "Save". Untick that checkbox.

;-)

Cheers,
MakeItSo

[navy]"We had to turn off that service to comply with the CDA Bill."[/navy]
- The Bastard Operator From Hell

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

There IS a "remove personal information" setting, but you must do that for every doc, and must be done manually. That's not what's being lost.

In the Office button >> [Word Options] >> [Save] there is a setting called "Preserve fidelity when sharing this document" and that's set to "Document1"

In the Office button >> [Word Options] >> [Advanced] there is a deeper set of options under "Preserve fidelity when sharing this document":
[ ] Save smart tags as XML properties in Web pages
[ ] Save form data as delimited text file
[x] Embed linguistic data
[x] Embed smart tags

None of this quite seems like the right thing.



Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

To be more specific, in Word 2007, under [Office button] >> [Word Options] >> [Save] there ISN'T a checkbox or anything associated with personal information.

You control personal information by clicking [Office button] >> [Prepare] >> [Inspect Document]. Then, in the Document Inspector window, you check "Document Properties and Personal Information" and click [Inspect]. Then, if there is a [Remove All] button next to "Document Properties and Personal Information", you click that. At that point, the username and other data associated with that file are wiped.

So, removing personal information is a very deliberate action that one must take for every document.

The issue I am experiencing seems unrelated to that.

The name associated with Track Changes gets wiped out and replaced by "Author" whenever the document is saved -- even if I'm still working on it.


Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

Hm...

Further testing. When I tell Word "make a new doc" instead of using any of our templates, the behavior no longer happens. When I use any of my templates, it does. Okay, this is promising, I just can't figure out what the DIFFERENCE is...

I may have to rebuild our templates from scratch to eliminate this, but I'd rather find the "fuck it up" checkbox and uncheck it...

So, something's wonk with our templates? With the settings in our templates?



Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[EdwardMartinIII]

What a pain in the tuckus!

This is the procedure to follow:

[Office button] >> [Word Options] >> [Trust Center] >> [Trust Center Settings...] >> [Document-specific settings].

Then uncheck the "Remove personal information from file properties on save"

Well, THAT was a Mr. Toad's Wild Ride of fun...



Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door