I have been frustrated by an idiosyncrasy of Word for many years and am now
at the point where I need to ask the question to see if anybody knows how to
get around this problem. I am using Word 2000 right now, although I have
experienced the same problem with every earlier version of Word.

Generally, when I want to compare two documents, the results come back just
as I expected them to and the differences between the two documents are
clearly marked. However, sometimes, when I try to compare two documents, I
get a message that says something like "the document already has changes, so
Word may not recognize all differences". Then, when I click OK, no change
markings appear on the document.

This problem seems to occur most frequently when another person has turned
on "Track Changes" in the ealier version of the document. I have tried
turning off "Track Changes" in the document, I have tried accepting all
changes, but to no avail. I still do not get any markings when I compare the
two documents. I have even tried copying all the text from the earlier
version of the document into a new document and then doing the comparison,
but that tactic has only worked in rare cases.

What baffles me is, what difference does it make if the document "already
has changes in it"? I truly don't care if it already has changes, I simply
want to know where differences exist between two documents.

Does anybody have any suggestions as to how I might resolve the problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.