Actually, it looks like Eric used the "suggestion" feature of the forum. It
was pointed out to me a few weeks ago the different between someone posting a
question and posting a suggestion intended for Microsoft.


"Jezebel" wrote:

It would more constructive to address these 'suggestions' to Microsoft,
rather than berating the help forum with them. No doubt they will dismiss
them as inane and pretentious, but there you go.




"EricM" wrote in message
...
The Compare and Merge Document function in word is almost useless. I
create
a wide variety of documents for the Navy for various systems being updated
or
developed. My Compare and Merge requirement is to to compare a new
version
of the document with an old version of the document and overlay the new
information on to the old information. A simple AND or OR function is not
going to be useful.

My suggestion is to design the Compare and Merge Document function so
that:
1. The function starts by matching up the paragraph or section headings of
the opened doc's headings to fit the selected filename doc's headings and
renumbering the opened doc's headings to match or fit within the selected
file's headings.
2. The opened document is has priority over the selected file to compare
and
merge with for test replacement. The goal to achieve is to compare and
merge
the latest changes in order to update the existing document.

Currently the compare and merge just seems to do an AND function. It
deletes document portions where there is no text to compare and it simple
combines the latest added words to the old text.

Perhaps a way to achieve more versatility is to give the user an option
list
of AND, OR, NOR, Exclusive AND, etc. or possibly a sequential function
selection of up to three. Say first to OR everything and save then to
Exclusive AND etc. To accomplish that I described above.

You could add in artificial intelligence programing to provide an option
for
a smart compare and merge where it asks the author a series of questions
such
as: Do you want to retain sections of text that have no matching test in
the
open document? (Y or N).

This would enable the function of build a set of rules to perform the
compare and merge and attain the authors goal.