Finding changes in a word doc

[Byff]

The wife has an instruction manual in the form of a word doc from work and it's 300-400 pages long. Every month, it gets updated and a new doc e-mailed to all the branches.

The problem is, she's not told what the changes are, so she's supposed to read the whole thing again and highlight the changed paragraphs to read out to her staff.

Can word automatically check for the changes? If it can't, is there another program that can?

[Porkbrain]

Not an expert with Word, but you can select View then Markup which appears to show amendments.

[percy flage]

You can certainly track changes in a word doc, but I think the orignal doc has to be set to track them. Try searching through the various options within "Help" - tracking changes. There's loads of them.

[dilbert]

If all else fails, save copies of before and after as text files, and use one of the very many free file comparison tools......

WinDiff

[flossythepig]

In Word 2000 all you need to do is open the new document. Then in the "Tools" menu select "Track Changes" and then "Compare Documents...".

You will be prompted for a document to compare, select the old version.

Changes will be highlighted in the new document.

You may get a warning message about field size, ignore it as it should provide you with the detail you need.
I'm sure this feature is in other versions.

Edited by flossythepig on Saturday 12th August 14:31

[Byff]

Cheers people, I knew I could rely on the PH Massive