Microsoft Office Forums - View Single Post - Problem with MS Word paragraph and character styles: format getting messed up

Guessed · 07-21-2020, 04:57 PM

Ravindra

I doubt it is corruption caused by a crash. I would think it is just an obscure bug in Word caused by the need to turn on and off large numbers of tags when tracked revisions overlap. The rules of xml mean that that partial overlaps of tagged areas are not allowed so when you do this with your tracked revisions, there is a mass of open/close tags that need to be added in the background file structure to deal with it.

I don't think you have helped the situation by the complexity of what you are doing with your document. To avoid problems, I always strive to make document formatting 'as simple as possible'.

In terms of styles, the simplest possible document would only use built-in styles. There are already over 250 styles that are built-in and you can't remove them (although you can hide them) so if you start by adding custom styles you are immediately making the document more complex than it needs to be. I don't mind a few custom styles but in I believe you should always use a built-in style that already exists before going to custom styles.

In terms of tracking revisions - this adds complexity to the document and as you have demonstrated, is buggy. There is a ceiling on how many revisions are WORTH tracking. Most changes you make to a file are obvious and don't need to be reviewed and therefore SHOULDN'T be tracked.

The point of revision tracking is so that you can draw someone else's eyes to a change you are recommending. I would put it to you that having a file with over 12,000 tracked revisions is pointless. No-one is going to pay attention to that level of detail and you drastically reduce the effectiveness of a review if you ask someone to reject/accept your revisions on a document like that. What ends up happening is the reviewer pays attention to the first 50 or so, then gets bored and either accepts all or just asks the author to give them a clean copy. If your document has excessive tracked revisions you lose the opportunity for the reviewer to add REAL VALUE to the document. By asking them to review the MEANINGFUL tracked revisions and not the low value ones, you get a proper value-adding review of your edits.

When I edit a document to be reviewed by others, I make sure the Status Bar shows revision tracking and therefore I can easily turn tracking on/off according to whether the reviewer needs to actually review the change vs a change that is already agreed. Every edit I make, I make a decision on whether this is something that other people HAVE TO review vs an obvious change not open for debate. Assuming you have a style guide that specifies character styles on verbal quotes and book titles, those edits would definitely fall into the 'already agreed as preferred formatting' category and therefore wouldn't be tracked.