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Old 05-11-2011, 08:02 AM
Aden Aden is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Mac OS X Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office for Mac 2011
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Default Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes


I'm using the Track Changes feature in Word 2011 (Mac) and I need to eliminate the time stamp feature that accompanies edits altogether. I turned off (unchecked) the "Include reviewer, time stamp, and action buttons" selection in "Show Markup > Preferences" pane, and while this does eliminate the reviewer and date/time stamp in the editorial balloons, when I hover over a balloon, a window appears that reveals the reviewer and date/time stamp! Ackkkkkk! How can I prevent this from happening?

Many thanks to all and make it a great day!

Last edited by Aden; 05-12-2011 at 04:32 AM.
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Old 05-11-2011, 06:26 PM
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Hi Aden,

That can only be prevented by accepting/rejecting the changes or by using the Document Inspector to remove the personal information.
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Old 05-12-2011, 03:14 AM
Aden Aden is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Mac OS X Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office for Mac 2011
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Thanks, Paul.

I found this same question posed on a PC-based Word forum, and a respondent offered the following instructions for addressing this issue in Word 2007 (PC) http://bit.ly/mpkGUM

On the Office button menu, go to Prepare > Inspect Document. After inspecting the document, when the results panel shows up, click the button to remove all "Document Properties and Personal Information". Then save the document. The dates and times will be removed from all tracked changes, and the reviewer name will be changed to "Author".

This won't do if you're using custom document properties, because those would be removed at the same time.


After many hours of poking around, I discovered that you CAN suppress the date & time stamp from Track Changes--here's how to do it (in Word for Mac 2011, at any rate):

Go to "Word > Preferences > Personal Settings > Security > Privacy Options" and check "Remove personal information from this file on save" then save the document.

Voila! No more date or time stamp in Track Changes comments and edits in this document. This is positively Byzantine, but I'm glad the option exists!

Aden
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Old 07-23-2012, 08:00 AM
wordguru wordguru is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Windows 7 64bit Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office 2010 64bit
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Default Removing timestamps from tracked changes

I found that if you're saving the Word document as docx, you can edit the XML directly and remove the timestamps this way. Follow the procedure below if you want to do this:

1. Rename the file to zip so it becomes a ZIP archive and you can easily open it using the appropriate tools
2. Open the renamed file, it will now open as a ZIP archive
3. Open the word folder in the ZIP archive
4. Open and edit the document.xml file in a good text editor. For example use Notepad++
5. Search using the following regular expression:
w:date="[\d\W]*\w[\d\W]*\w"
and replace with nothing. This regular expression will match all XML
timestamp attributes and remove them from the document.xml file.
6. Update the ZIP archive with the modified document.xml file
7. Rename the ZIP archive back to docx sothat it becomes a Word document again
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Old 06-15-2013, 11:08 AM
mikitis mikitis is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Mac OS X Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office for Mac 2011
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Thank you so much!!! It worked perfectly. The changes and bubbles are still there but not the Date and Time...

I really appreciated your help. My boss won't find out the crazy hours spend working in the middle of the night!
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Old 01-23-2014, 07:25 AM
eyesofbambi eyesofbambi is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Mac OS X Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office for Mac 2011
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Default Works on OS x 10.8.5 Office for Mac 2011

You're a life saver! Works like a charm on OS x 10.8.5 Office for Mac 2011!
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Old 09-13-2014, 02:03 AM
Edders Edders is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Windows 8 Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office 2013
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Default Removing timestamps from track changes

Can you tell me how I format the w:date="[\d\W]*\w[\d\W]*\w" data which is noted below, so that I can remove the timestamps from the changes that I make to a word document?
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Old 09-13-2014, 02:39 AM
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As post #4 indicates, that is a regular expression, used to search for an existing date/time stamp. It is not a date/time stamp format, per se.
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Old 09-13-2014, 03:58 AM
Edders Edders is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Windows 8 Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office 2013
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Ok many thanks. I think I'm out of my depth and probably didn't explain that in my previous post!

Essentially, by using the inspection tool in Word I can eliminate the actual time for amendments and it will now show that it was me who made an amendment and the day that I made it. However, it would be good to eliminate the day too, so that there is no date stamp at all.

I have no experience of amending XML files, so I may just be stuck with the status that I have got to?!
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Old 09-13-2014, 04:28 AM
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Again, as post #4 indicates, this can all be done using Notepad++ (which you can download). From there, it's a simple matter of following the steps in post #4. Doing that doesn't require any particular XML experience.
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Old 09-13-2014, 05:38 AM
Edders Edders is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Windows 8 Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office 2013
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Thank you, your patience is appreciated.

I'm not sure that it will work as I wish. Firstly I don't understand how to format the time data that is noted. However, even if I could do it, I would only want it to amend my data and not the other comments made by other people.
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Old 09-14-2014, 10:13 AM
Edders Edders is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Windows 8 Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office 2013
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I believe that there is a way where the time is eliminated but the date remains in track changes. How can I implement this without using the Inspector as when you use that function the Authors all disappear and are replaced by 'author'.
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Old 09-14-2014, 02:15 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Edders View Post
I'm not sure that it will work as I wish. Firstly I don't understand how to format the time data that is noted. However, even if I could do it, I would only want it to amend my data and not the other comments made by other people.
As I have already said, the has nothing to do with formatting the date. As for whether you amend only your data, that is no more difficult than checking each record before letting the Find/Replace update it, the same as you might do in Word itself.
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Old 09-14-2014, 09:43 PM
Edders Edders is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Windows 8 Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office 2013
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Thank you very much. I will leave this post now, as I am definitely out of my depth.
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Old 05-14-2015, 03:29 AM
iris iris is offline Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Windows 7 64bit Eliminate time stamp in Track Changes Office 2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wordguru View Post
I found that if you're saving the Word document as docx, you can edit the XML directly and remove the timestamps this way.
Thanks wordguru, that's exactly what I needed!

I know this is an old thread, but I still found it useful, so in the spirit of paying it forward, some pointers to those still looking to solve this issue. Basically, a more detailed account of wordguru's steps 4 and 5:

The text editor wordguru mentions can be downloaded from here: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/download/. It's free and it's excellent. It's a plain text editor like the notepad program that comes with windows, but much better.

Once you're opened up your document.xlm file (that you got from unzipping your renamed .docx) in Notepad++, hit CTRL-H or Replace... from the Search menu. You'll then get a window like this:



  • CTRL-H to open the Replace... dialogue,
  • select 'Regular expresson' in the bottom left corner,
  • paste the bit of code that wordguru mentioned, w:date="[\d\W]*\w[\d\W]*\w" in the 'Find what:' field,
  • leave the 'Replace with:' field empty. (Alternatively, you could replace with a timestamp of your choice)
  • hit the 'Replace All' button.
Notepad++ will report how many occurrences it has replaced. Save your document and continue to wordguru's step 6.

Alternatively, you can reset the timestamps on edits by saving two versions of your document, named say 'original.docx' and 'revised.docx'.
In the document called 'original.docx' you then need to reject all changes (or if the document also has tracked changes by others, you can also just reject your own changes by first showing just yours (Show Markup > Reviewers > select your only) and then choosing Reject All Changes Shown.)
In the document called 'revised.docx', you need to do the opposite: accept all changes (or again just yours).
Now use the Compare function to compare your two versions of the document, with the one where you've rejected all changes as the original, and the one where you've accepted all changes as the revised version. This will give you a brand new document with tracked changes. This will not remove the timestamp on edits, but reset the timestamp on all edits to the moment you've done the compare. You can customize the timestamp by temporarily changing your computer's time and date settings before you run the compare.
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