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Unexpected modifications from/to Microsoft Word

Posted: 2020-02-04 13:49:19
by ccp
I REALLY want to use Nisus Writer Pro . It's the tool I've been hoping for for many years. I exchange lots of Word docs with other IBMers as well as folks in other companies. Lots of tracked changes and comments and authors. The presentation of these is far superior in Nisus, so I naturally wanted to try it out.

I opened one of these files in Nisus, then I saved the file under a new name and exited. I started Word and opened the original document and then used the Word Tool "Combine Documents" in an effort to see fit anything changed, adding "Nisus" as the updated document's author. I saw all of the original backup and change tracking, but I also saw a very large number of changes apparently introduced by the file's brief existence in Nisus.

While I cannot share the specific document, I can attach a portion of the Revisions window shown by Word. The changes listed were mostly on the heading and first lines of the first paragraph.

I sincerely hope I've just managed to fat-finger this and that you can set me straight.

Charles

Re: Unexpected modifications from/to Microsoft Word

Posted: 2020-02-04 16:46:37
by martin
Hi Charles: thanks for trying Nisus Writer! Unfortunately the short answer is that it's unlikely you can influence this behavior. There are no "fat-fingers" you can more nimbly maneuver to prevent this. These formatting irregularities are likely being introduced as you pass the file back and forth between apps.

I just tried a few quick tests and reproduced what you described. The formatting differences appear to mostly affect the newlines for certain paragraphs:

diff.png
diff.png (162.78 KiB) Viewed 2999 times

That screenshot shows that Word thinks the font changed for certain newline characters. Aside from style definitions at the top of the list of changes, is that predominantly the kind of formatting change you're seeing too?

I'm not sure what accounts for the changes, but it's likely some quirk of the way the RTF file is interpreted by Word. We'll have to investigate further. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.