Sonny Software

Does this sound familiar to anyone? You write a manuscript in Word. Then you sent it to colleagues for review. You get it back, with comments in track changes. One of the comments has to do with a citation in the text. So, you un-scan the document to work with the citation and.....

Bam!

All your track changes are gone, Removed.

I have no idea why this happens (it's probably Word's fault). I'm just wondering what's going on here, or what to do about it. Luckily, I had a backup of the document. This time.

Just a bump. This is still happening all the time. Can anyone explain this behavior?

Thanks

I would send Jon an email for tech support.

Sorry I can't help.

He has ... I don't use track changes myself. Does anyone who does use track changes have any experience with this?

Jon
Sonny Software

I have a lot of experience with this. Word treats the unscanning and scanning of the document as basically deleting and restoring the text. This wipes out any changes you had tracked. If I am formatting for Nature (numerical order) and snip out a section of text that has a reference, then I need to unscan and rescan to get the references to have the right numbering again. This destroys the notations of every change I have made. Given that most manuscripts bounce back and forth between several authors, this is a major problem with the software. It doesn't matter if it's a bug with Word or with Bookends implementation, the combination of the two just doesn't work right. I wouldn't say it's driving my PI crazy to not be able to see where all my edits were made, but it is driving us both to annoyance, and since he is a Reference Manager/EndNote guy, makes me look bad for using a 'non-standard' software solution. It would be great to figure out a work-around...

There are several solutions. One is to scan the RTF. The other is to resolve changes before scanning. And finally, the one I use, is not to scan until submission is imminent. Personally, I don't see the point in constant scanning, especially since the temporary citations carry much more information than final citations (especially in the case of Nature, which uses superscripted numbers).

Jon
Sonny Software

Yeah, I guess not scanning till submission works better... I like to know my exact word count, but I guess I can just scan, check and then Undo...

Good suggestions. Thanks.

I'd like to add my support to the idea that this is a significant limitation. There are of course work-around solutions but they are awkward and inelegant. BE is in so many other ways elegant and smooth.

Saving the scan till the very end assumes an ideal world where there are not last minute changes, hold-ups etc. And it is very useful to be able to keep track of the final pagination, word-count etc before the final stage.

I accept it may be impossible, but if there is a way to deal with it properly, it would be a much appreciated improvement.

Thanks.

It's a bug in Word, not Bookends. I don't see any workaround for it, except perhaps to see how Word 2008 (or whatever it's called) behaves.

Jon
Sonny Software

Hi - Does anyone have a work around for this by now? Or a way to solve the problem? It is a real limitation for multiauthored papers. I know you can leave the scanning til the end, but that just doesn't jive with some coauthors. I tried scanning the rtf but it doesn't work. Do people using Word 2008 still have this issue?
Thanks