Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the document?

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Vanceone
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Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the document?

Post by Vanceone »

I realize this is a bit unusual, but here's my scenario. I file legal documents through the court system, and they have particular requirements. One is that all documents are either PDF's or, for documents that the Court may adjust like a proposed order, in RTF.

This makes Nisus perfect, since RTF is the native format. Problem, though: every time I submit a RTF generated by Nisus, the system rejects it. Why? Because the "RTF cannot contain revision tracking." Even though I don't use track changes on the RTF document at all, apparently Nisus embeds codes for revisions into the file somehow?

My workaround is to open the RTF in textedit and just save without changing anything; Textedit doesn't understand track changes so it strips out that info on save.

I'd like to not chance Textedit ruining other features though. Is there a way to set Nisus to not save any revision information at all?

Thanks in advance!
adryan
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Re: Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the documen

Post by adryan »

G’day, Vanceone et al

The topic title refers to “Track Changes”, but I don’t think Nisus tracks changes (apart from the number of Undo locations you set in Preferences) if you have the “Track Changes” feature turned off. If you turn the feature on and Show Changes Pane, and see that changes appear there, you can Accept All Changes and they will be dismissed from the Changes Pane. This may be what you need to do.

But it may be instead that the file has somehow embedded reference(s) to version history, independent of Track Changes settings, in which case the topic title should reflect this. (My understanding — which could be erroneous — is that versions are related more to the operating system than to Nisus Writer itself.) So try the following:–

Just before you submit your final version of a file, Open it, Select All and Copy.
Now Open a New File.
(You may need to ensure that Track Changes is turned off.)
Paste.
Save this latest file with a different filename.
Then do the experiment: File > Revert To > Browse All Versions…
The Time Machine environment should show that no previous versions of the file are available.
Submit the file before OS X can make any changes to it. (It probably won’t: I’m just being cautious.)
See if your court system now accepts your file.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Adrian
MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)
macOS Ventura
Nisus Writer user since 1996
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Hamid
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Re: Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the documen

Post by Hamid »

Vanceone wrote:[...] Problem, though: every time I submit a RTF generated by Nisus, the system rejects it. Why? Because the "RTF cannot contain revision tracking." Even though I don't use track changes on the RTF document at all, apparently Nisus embeds codes for revisions into the file somehow?[...]
There is no revision tracking in the file if you did not use it; the reason for the RTF file being rejected could be because it contains metadata:
https://help.greenfiling.com/tag/headers/
You can strip metadata by running the 'Strip Metadata' macro from the Macro:Document menu.
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martin
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Re: Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the documen

Post by martin »

adryan wrote:I don’t think Nisus tracks changes (apart from the number of Undo locations you set in Preferences) if you have the “Track Changes” feature turned off.
That's correct. If Track Changes is turned off, Nisus Writer won't record any changes in the document on disk.
But it may be instead that the file has somehow embedded reference(s) to version history, independent of Track Changes settings, in which case the topic title should reflect this. (My understanding — which could be erroneous — is that versions are related more to the operating system than to Nisus Writer itself.)
Your understanding is also correct here Adrian: the document version history is maintained by the system (OSX). However, I think it's highly unlikely that's a factor here. Most actions a user takes with documents really only deal with the last version that was saved; OSX does not bring along the whole history. That's true for email attachments, and very likely for whatever Vanceone is doing to submit his document to the courts.

I think Hamid's hunch about metadata is correct. However, I also don't think the "Strip Metadata" macro will help here, as it sounds like there's no actual metadata to start with. I think it's most likely that some RTF codes that Nisus Writer always includes by default is triggering a false positive; the court system thinks there are tracked changes in the document, even though there are none.

To test that hypothesis, could I please have Vanceone test some documents? In the attached archive you'll find 3 RTF files. The first document "1basic" is dead simple and contains no tracked changes, but should still trigger a court system rejection. The second document "2no-revtbl" removes the \revtbl RTF control, while the third document "3no-revtim" also strips the \revtim RTF control. I'd like to know if either of the latter documents are allowed by the court system. Thanks for your help!
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Vanceone
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Re: Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the documen

Post by Vanceone »

Thanks for the help Martin. I'm checking on those test files.
Vanceone
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Re: Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the document?

Post by Vanceone »

So it's been a long time, but I finally managed to get an update to this issue. Turns out, that removing /revtbl allows the document to be accepted by the court system. /revtim seems to be acceptable.

As to why /revtbl is such a bad one, who knows. And while I can strip out /revtbl from my documents using a programmers editor (sublime Text, in this case) it's a bit... awkward.

Does /revtbl need to be placed into the document by Nisus?
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martin
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Re: Is there a way to strip "Track Changes" from the document?

Post by martin »

Vanceone wrote: 2019-06-26 12:13:50 So it's been a long time, but I finally managed to get an update to this issue. Turns out, that removing /revtbl allows the document to be accepted by the court system. /revtim seems to be acceptable.

As to why /revtbl is such a bad one, who knows.
Thank you for following-up and letting us know the cause of the problem Vance. The court system's policy here is reasonable enough. They are probably trying to prevent submissions where documents accidentally contain hidden information that they don't intend to disclose. Scanning for particular RTF controls (like /revtbl from tracked changes) is a good way to check if a document contains such unwanted information.
Does /revtbl need to be placed into the document by Nisus?
If there aren't any tracked changes recorded in a document, then I don't believe the /revtbl control needs to be saved in the file. The /revtbl control just lists the names of the authors involved in any of the document's tracked changes. If there are no changes, there's no need to keep the list of authors.

I'll see about changing this behavior in Nisus Writer for a future software update. We should be able prevent Nisus Writer from encoding the unwanted /revtbl control. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, I appreciate it!
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