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April 17, 2009
Don’t Swear, Compare
Dear Larry,
A partner of mine wrote a Word document and then sent it to
both our colleague and me. Unfortunately, we didn’t communicate too well, and we
both ended up modifying the document to our liking. Is there a convenient way to
compare what he changed with what I changed?
Also, please answer an unrelated question about Word if you
would. One of my other Word documents is just over three pages. Is there an easy
way to make it fit on three pages without having to delete any text?
Thank you very much.
A. K.
Dear A. K.,
Fortunately, you asked two Word questions that have fairly
simple answers.
Let’s start with the second question. Open the document, and
click File, Print Preview. Hover your mouse over the various buttons in the
Print Preview toolbar. One of them will pop up a tooltip that reads “Shrink to
Fit.” Click that button, and Word will automatically make some minor adjustments
to squeeze your document onto three pages instead of four. Chances are, you
won’t even notice the change!
Now onto question one. To begin, open one of the documents,
preferably the one with your colleague’s changes.
Next, click Tools, Compare and Merge Documents. Browse to the
folder containing your version of the same document, and click it. A number of
red “comments” now populate the margins. You’ll also notice that a new Word
toolbar has appeared. This is the Reviewing toolbar; it should read “Final
Showing Markup” on the far left side.
In the Reviewing toolbar, click the blue arrow pointing to the
right. This will highlight first red comment in the margin explaining the first
difference between the two documents. Since you opened your colleague’s version
of the document first and your version second, the comment refers to a change
your colleague made that you did not. At this point, either click the blue
checkmark icon in the Reviewing toolbar to indicate that you agree with your
colleague and accept the change or the red X icon in the toolbar to reject the
change.
Click the blue arrow pointing to the right to move to the next
difference. Once again, accept the change or reject it. Repeat this process
until you have addressed all the differences. (Eventually, clicking the blue
arrow icon will result in the message “The document contains no comments or
tracked changes.” This tells you you’re finished with the comparison.)
If you want to save over your copy of the document with this
final version, click File, Save. If you want to create a third copy of the
document and keep your partner’s version and your version intact, click File,
Save As, and give this new version of the document a different name.
Send this new version to your two partners. Now it’s their
problem!
This is Larry Schneider, logging off.
