Sorry, I forgot to address your other points.
Using color coded change bars is not practical for several reasons.
-Over the course of a documents life, dozens of CRs might be written against
it. If I only had to deal with 9, I would be in heaven.
-Multiple engineers can write different CRs against the same document.
-Multiple engineers may make different contributeions to the same CR. I have
a CR right now that has the contributions of 20 different engineers across 3
different documents. Two of the docs are requirements specification (e.g.
Function XYZ shall report the value of alpha twenty times per second.) and
one of them is an algorithm document that contains the equations for the
system (e.g. alpha is the double integral of all gammas over the solution
space of deltas in the complex plane).
Yes, I am looking for some way identify changes. Numbering them is a way to
do it. I need to give large groups of changes the same number.
Could we get a new document management system? Of course we can, it's your
money after all (Gov contracting = tax dollars at work.). We used to be an
Interleaf shop. This kind of thing required no thought in Interleaf. The
problem there was that the licensing costs did not allow for individuals to
have their own copy. Telecommuting was a non-starter because the network
performance was atrocious for both the app and the license server.
"Everybody" has MS Word. The indirect cost savings from using that
established infrastructure is tremendous. We just have this tiny little
limitation in Word that causes hours of frustration.
There must a macro out there that can do what I need.
Ed
"Daiya Mitchell" wrote:
I'm really confused about what you are hoping for, partially because you use
CR for change request in paragraph 1, then in paragraph 4 CR appears to mean
the reason behind the change request, and to me those would be two different
things.
I'm totally clueless as to what color coding the revision marks might do for
you. If you wanted to track the reason for the change, and you only have 9
or so reasons to change something, you could manipulate the colors on the
same computer by changing the User Information in Word. But I have this
feeling your mention of colors is a total red herring.
I'm kinda suspecting that what you would like is numbered changes, so that
you can always track Change 1 to Change Request 1. Is that right?
If you clarified what you needed, there might be a way to get it.
Alternatively, aren't there other document management programs (vaguely
thinking Delta View) that might be worth investigating?
On 3/18/05 5:21 AM, "EdGabb" wrote:
The default methods for tracking revisions in Word (any version) are very
limiting. I work on Gov contracts where revisions can happen to a document
for several reasons. E.g., Fig 4 changes because the manufacturer changes a
part number (CR#1, i.e. change request 1) but Fig 5 changes because the
install script has been streamlined (CR#2).
In this setting, it is not practical to have Engineer1 make the Fig 4 change
and Engineer2 make the change to Fig 5 just to have the rev marks color
coded. The documents are hundreds of pages long and over the course of a
year (we redeliver the docs to the customer on a yearly basis), any one
document might have 20 or 30 different CRs applied that each has to be
separately recognized and traceable to the particular CR that drove the
change.
We track all these changes in a database (DOORS) but our deliverable is a
word document, not the database or a report from the database.
What I really want is a way to have a reason code next to each change bar,
i.e. CR001 alongside one revision bar and CR002 alongside another one. I'll
settle for a reliable way to indicate single red bar is CR001, single blue
bar is CR002, double red bar is CR003, etc. or even place a small drawing,
wordart or comment associated with the change bar to indicate the reason for
change.
Someone has to have figured out how to do this.
Ed
--
Daiya Mitchell, MVP Mac/Word
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