I am trying to compare two revisions of a document (manually revised in
separate documents, not using any of the built-in revision features).
Each is almost 200 pages long and contain several tables.

As you might guess, Word choked and hung before completing the
comparison. So I broke the files into managable "chunks".

Two problems I cannot escape however:

1) One paragragh caused a bizarre problem in that everything after it
was marked as deleted and replaced even though it appeared to be 99+%
common, thus burying the wheat deep in the chaff. If I manually made
the paragraph the same as the original, the delete/replace problem
would go away and following individual changes would be identifed as
designed. As I incrementally re-typed the changes and repeated the
comparison, it would eventually reach the point (and it didn't take
many changes) where Word would again gag and show the entire remaining
piece of the document as deleted and replaced. Finally I had to just
make the "chunk" break right after that paragragh rather than before to
get past that problem. However, any ideas as to workable solutions out
there and possible explanations for the problem?


2) The other problem is that the large tables produced the same issue
as above, but that wasn't a surprise and revisions in tables have
always been flaky. Anticipating that however, I saved the table
"chunks" as text files to remove all of the formatting issues and then
ran the compare. Did not go far into the document before it repeated
the same behavior described above. Again...ideas?

Thanks

Roscoe

G'day "Roscoe" ,

Possibly document corruption. Try a Maggie: cuttenpaste everything
except the last paragraph mark in each section to a new document.


Steve Hudson - Word Heretic

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)
Without prejudice


Roscoe reckoned:

I am trying to compare two revisions of a document (manually revised in
separate documents, not using any of the built-in revision features).
Each is almost 200 pages long and contain several tables.

As you might guess, Word choked and hung before completing the
comparison. So I broke the files into managable "chunks".

Two problems I cannot escape however:

1) One paragragh caused a bizarre problem in that everything after it
was marked as deleted and replaced even though it appeared to be 99+%
common, thus burying the wheat deep in the chaff. If I manually made
the paragraph the same as the original, the delete/replace problem
would go away and following individual changes would be identifed as
designed. As I incrementally re-typed the changes and repeated the
comparison, it would eventually reach the point (and it didn't take
many changes) where Word would again gag and show the entire remaining
piece of the document as deleted and replaced. Finally I had to just
make the "chunk" break right after that paragragh rather than before to
get past that problem. However, any ideas as to workable solutions out
there and possible explanations for the problem?


2) The other problem is that the large tables produced the same issue
as above, but that wasn't a surprise and revisions in tables have
always been flaky. Anticipating that however, I saved the table
"chunks" as text files to remove all of the formatting issues and then
ran the compare. Did not go far into the document before it repeated
the same behavior described above. Again...ideas?

Thanks

Roscoe

The document is 200 pages long. That is not practical. As for
corruption, I have no doubt given the ugly nature and the many hands
that touched it.

So you think your doc is corrupted but refuse to try one of the standard
fixes for corrupt documents? Huh?

The first way to check for a corrupt document is to
copy the entire thing, *excluding* the last paragraph mark, into a new
document. That last paragraph mark holds a lot of information which can get
corrupted, and copying the text into a document with a fresh one keeps your
formatting, but can fix some glitches.

A paragraph mark is a ¶. Click on ¶ on the standard toolbar to show
nonprinting characters, including paragraph marks.

See this link for further info:

http://www.mvps.org/word/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm

DM


On 1/11/05 12:49 PM, "Roscoe" wrote:

The document is 200 pages long. That is not practical. As for
corruption, I have no doubt given the ugly nature and the many hands
that touched it.


--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
Word FAQ: http://www.word.mvps.org/
MacWord Tips: http://www.word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/
What's an MVP? A volunteer! Read the FAQ: http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

I misunderstood your directions. When you said every section, I
interpreted that as every paragraph. I did not seize on the "section"
word.

(and yes, I know what paragragh marks are