Hope y’all will excuse this technical post…I’m thinking it might help some of you out there.
The program that editors like working with is Word. They like editing back and forth with the writer with Word’s Track Changes program.
I’ve gotten so that I enjoy using the program myself and use it for my own editing and revision, even before sending the manuscript to my publisher for revision.
In previous versions of Word (most recently 2003, 2007), if I wanted to remove my inane babblings to myself before sending my document to my first readers, agent, and editor, I’d open the document; save an old, marked-up version for my own use; open Track Changes; accept or remove all the changes; delete the comments; turn off Track Changes (if I was trying to be especially cautious); save the new version under a new name (“for review” was usually in the title name), and email it off.
Imagine my chagrin when I’ve recently done this in Word 2010 and found that my first reader and agent were opening up marked-up documents with my private notes, ideas, etc.
At first I thought it was just me making an error in one of the steps above. That’s because I’m very forgetful, but I can usually hold a thought in my head throughout a 2-minute process.
Since it’s happened a couple of times recently, I thought to try to do a little research on the problem. Because today I’m sending 75 pages of a document to a new editor for the new quilting mystery series for a cover conference and I really want to send out a clean copy that doesn’t show my personal scribbles about what I see as problem areas of the manuscript, etc.
On Google, a simple search showed that others were having the same issue with 2010—most notably a law office that was horrified it was sending marked-up documents to a different law firm when they thought they weren’t.
After some digging, I discovered that one thing you’ll want to do if you want to send a clean document out is to open your document, go to your “Developer” tab, click on “Macro Security,” click on “Privacy Options,” look at “Document-specific settings” and UN-check “Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving.” Because, y’all, if I’ve hidden something, I darned well want it to stay hidden!
To make absolutely sure your document doesn’t have any hidden metadata, you’re going to want to save a marked-up version of your old document for yourself (because once this document is scrubbed, it’s possible you can’t ever get those edits back), then do this (and this is right from Microsoft Word help):
- Open the Office document that you want to inspect for hidden data or personal information.
- Click the Microsoft Office Button
, click Save As, and then type a name in the File name box to save a copy of your original document. (In 2010, click “File”)
Important It is a good idea to use the Document Inspector on a copy of your original document because it is not always possible to restore the data that the Document Inspector removes.
- In the copy of your original document, click the Microsoft Office Button, (file in 2010) point to Prepare, (“Prepare for Sharing” in 2010) and then click Inspect Document.
- In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the check boxes to choose the types of hidden content that you want to be inspected. For more information about the individual Inspectors, see What information can the Document Inspector find and remove?
- Click Inspect.
- Review the results of the inspection in the Document Inspector dialog box.
- Click Remove All next to the inspection results for the types of hidden content that you want to remove from your document.
Important
- If you remove hidden content from your document, you might not be able to restore it by clicking Undo.
- The inspectors for Comments and Annotations, Document Properties and Personal Information, and Headers and Footers cannot be used in an Excel workbook that has been saved as a shared workbook (Review tab, Shared Workbook command). This is because shared workbooks use personal information to enable different people to collaborate on the same workbook. To remove this information from a shared workbook, you can copy the workbook, and then unshare it. To unshare a workbook, on the Review tab, click Shared Workbook. On the Editing tab, clear the Allow changes by more than one user at the same time check box.
- If you want to remove hidden data and personal information from documents you save in one of the OpenDocument Formats (.odt, .ods, .odp), you must run the Document Inspector every time you save the document in one of these formats.
I’m glad that my own musings and thoughts on my manuscript only made it into the hands of first readers and my agent. It’s just not cool to send a document off that way to an editor. And I’m a little irked at Microsoft that this privacy issue wasn’t more obvious.
And if there are any techies out there who find any errors in this post or have any additional comments to make on this issue, please bring them up in my comments so I can make addendums and corrections to the post.
Any of y’all irritated by privacy issues with Facebook or MS Word?
Elizabeth – Wow! Really useful stuff! Thanks for sharing how to make sure what one sends out is “cleaned up.” Much better than getting a rude shock…
Elizabeth, As a previous “tech person” I usually love new upgrades and I love 2010, and using track changes. But WOW on these changes which I did not know.
I use to go to a technology conference in Osage Beach (I like to call it heaven) where they would always talk about the newest “things” and Microsoft was always a very popular class. It was there I would learn about things like this. Now I have to learn them on my own or in this case…you. Thanks for the heads up.
Keep those personal comments hidden! :)
Wow, thanks for the heads up. This is a really useful post.
This is what drives me mad about Track Changes! I make bold notes to myself on my own text and manually delete them, but when I’m editing I sometimes get sent stuff that I then can’t get Track Changes switched off on! Thanks for sharing this – this will be very helpful, as Track Changes is still by far the best way to edit someone else’s work, but it can be problematic lately.
Very helpful column. Thanks.
I always disliked MS Word, and try to avoid it as much as I can. Even Wordpad is better. Most of the time I write my stuff directly in Google Docs, and store it safely (I hope) on Google’s servers. For science writing, including math, MS Word is a total nightmare. I use LaTeX for this kind of writing. >:)
Cold As Heaven
I’ve received a few documents at work with mark up comments. Very interesting read.
I found the new updates by software companies often make things worse, not better. For example I liked the old mail merge but can never figure out how to use the new one.
Chemical Fusion
Thank you for the information. That is a major annoyance. It seems that Microsoft needs to think a little more about who is using the product and how it is intended to be used. I would be horrified to send something out to an editor that had my CP’s marks on it or my own ramblings.
Why do they have to make things so complicated?
This was very helpful. I don’t have the newest version so it hasn’t been a problem. And I do my own writing and revising on word perfect (yes, so ten years ago), then change it to Word. But I like to find out everything I can about Word. I should take a class.
I don’t have the newest version either, but I’ll remember this when/if I upgrade.
Margot–That was the shock to me…that I thought I’d cleaned up the copy and was sending out a scrubbed manuscript. But I wasn’t.
Juliette–It’s very, very useful for editing. You’re right–it can be problematic, but usually I don’t have any problems with it. Oh, there’s also a place in those Word settings where you can check a box that will let you know if you’ve got mark-ups in the copy you’re sending out…I checked it. I don’t want any more surprises.
Cold As Heaven–I’m using Google Docs a lot now, but I haven’t seen the publishers jump onboard with it. I’m hoping they do, although Google has irked me lately, too (issues with Blogger, mainly.)
Enid–I’ve found that, too. It’s almost like whenever Word or Facebook upgrades, I have privacy concerns of some kind. I’m wondering if 18 year olds are running these companies–because the younger generation (here I’m sounding like an old goat, but…hey, I’m an old goat), don’t have those filters that I like to have.
Teresa–I think that sounds like a pretty interesting class~! I try to keep up with *limited* tech news (my husband is in IT, so I get some information that way. I’m especially interested in anything pertaining to Office (especially Word) and social media. I didn’t see this problem coming and would never have even KNOWN about it if my agent and readers hadn’t mentioned that my notes were on the document.
Dawn–I’m pretty sure that I sent my Memphis book 3 to my editor accidentally all marked-up, which makes me feel a little sick. But I’ve worked with her on several projects, so she knows I’m not usually careless like that. Bleh. She never said anything to me about it, which is nice. But I still feel icky about it.
Karen–I remember Word Perfect! Actually, I’ve heard of several Word Perfect devotees. With Word 2010, you can type something up in Word Perfect and save it in a variety of different file formats (including, actually, PDFs.) It’s pretty cool.
Alex–I can understand why people put off upgrading!
I’m really not very technically adept. I just recently heard about the track changes bit & haven’t used it yet. I plan on trying it out during the summer. This will help – thanks! :)
This does help! Thank you! I’ve been thinking about getting Word 2010 and I’ve heard some people are struggling with it. I’m bookmarking this!
Good tips here. I use Track Changes for my editing also, but only for editing for other authors. My own self-editing I just make changes in the ms – but I do keep an ‘original’ in case I don’t like my revisions as much as I think I liked what I had before, lol.
About TC’s, I actually preferred the older version, I think it was 2003 and earlier before they changed it significantly? Used to be when you deleted something it got whisked over to the right sidebar – you still had it there if you wanted to revise/put it back, but it was OUT of the main ms. Now the deletions stay right in the ms, only marked through in red. What I don’t like about it is you have to be very careful you have all the spaces and punctuations perfect – without being able to ‘see’ the cleaned up “All Changes Accepted” ms. What I do now is keep an open Word page, blank, so if I have a whole hodgepodge of changes in a section, I highlight, copy, and paste in onto the blank page to see if it’s all correct. Works for me.
Heather–I was struggling with it, and not even realizing I was!~
Christine–Thanks!
The Old Silly–Keeping the original is key! I’ve lost stuff before that I was hitting myself in the head over, later.
Okay, I *think* you can change that, Marvin, in earlier versions of Track Changes by clicking Track Changes, then clicking “review pane” or by clicking Track Changes, then Change Tracking Options. Because it’s VERY annoying, I agree, and I struggled with that. I’d have too many spaces in between my period and the start of the next sentence, etc. Bleh.
Joe–Thanks for coming by!
Really? Cool! Jeez, glad I stopped back today, I’m just getting ready to do some editing, too – Thanks a bunch, Liz – you’re as smart and helpful as you are pretty! (big wink, and I mean it) :-)
Marvin D Wilson
Jemi–I think you’ll really like Track Changes, once you get used to it…I’ve found it super-useful (except in this once instance!)
Marvin–Ha! Aren’t you sweet! :)
Update – hey Liz, you can change it to swipe the deleted stuff off the body of the page and scoot it over into the sidebar. Under “Change Options” you choose “Always” under “balloons” and then everything you delete and all your comments are posted in little balloons to the right of the ms.
This is HUGE! :-)
Marvin–Cool! I think you can also choose to see them at the bottom of the page in a review pane, but I like the idea of the balloons, similar to the comment balloons, better. :)
I’m still working in Microsoft 2003. I read this and thought, Wow! What a pain in the patootie. Seems like updated versions of software should make things easier.
Helen–It makes me wonder, honestly, if the software designers thought about who might be using their product! I mean, when we are trying to *hide* notes, why would we want them to suddenly spring up again when someone else opens the document? It really just makes no sense…
Microsoft has a habit of breaking functional products, especially in the area of privacy and security. While I have used MS Word extensively, I’ve started to drift away from it towards more secure and stable platforms.Sad that they feel the uncontrollable urge to tinker.
Gene–That’s what I thought, too. Because, ultimately, it’s a good product. I’m definitely going to continue using it…but now I have a few reservations when I didn’t before.