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I'm copying and pasting from a document with tracked changes to a text-only document. Previously when copying and pasting from such, text that was strike-through (ie, changed) was not copied and did not show up when I pasted. Now, suddenly, it is. How would I get Word to not copy the strike-through text from the tracked changes?
Edited slightly to better define that the problem is occurring when copy/pasting from Word to plaintext.
Logos
Posted 2015-03-30T23:01:16.740
Reputation: 163
2
Word handles this kind of strangely. Whether tracked changes show up in the destination document depends on whether Track Changes is turned on in both the new document and the source document.
Track Changes Turned On in the Source, Off in the Destination
This is what you want. Copied text is pasted into the destination document without tracked changes.
On in the Destination (either off or on in the Source)
The whole insertion is marked as a change in the new document. Useful if you need to keep track of what you've added.
Off in Both
This is the setting that causes the issue you were having, where tracked changes are copied into the destination document.
Kelly Tessena Keck
Posted 2015-03-30T23:01:16.740
Reputation: 645
1Tracked changes is on in the source document - the destination document is actually a text file. I haven't tried copying and pasting from a word doc with track changes on to a second word doc with track changes off, I will give that a go and report back. – Logos – 2015-03-31T15:51:26.463
Yes, that works ... between Word documents. How can I get it to only copy the non strike-through text when I paste into a non-Word document, tho? I definitely have been able to do this in the past. – Logos – 2015-03-31T18:10:35.697
Well, as a workaround I can paste it into a proxy Word document, then cut the pasted text and paste it into the plaintext... but I'd much rather be able to copy and paste without that extra step :( – Logos – 2015-04-01T00:56:45.800
Can you clarify what you wanted? I had thought you wanted to paste all the text, whether it had been deleted in the Word document or not. Do you only want to paste the text that hasn't been deleted? – Kelly Tessena Keck – 2015-04-01T13:13:36.217
Correct, I want to display the changes (ie, strikethrough stuff) in Word but copy only the final version of the document's text, and paste it into a plaintext file. – Logos – 2015-04-01T16:57:04.397
Okay, that makes sense. In that case, I'm not seeing the problem with @Molx 's version, if you don't want the deleted text to be copied. – Kelly Tessena Keck – 2015-04-01T20:10:24.210
As I pointed out, I need to be able to see what the deleted text was. This is so that I can find it in the plaintext copy and overwrite it with a paste of the amended text. – Logos – 2015-04-01T21:14:29.260
Okay, so if you copy what you need with Final showing, then go back to Final Showing Markup, that will show what the deleted text was without pasting it. Would that work? – Kelly Tessena Keck – 2015-04-02T11:26:51.617
Technically yes, except I'd need to do that dozens of times. The task is mirroring changes from a tracked Word document to an HTML document (for various reasons this is the way it has to be done). What's frustrating is that I've done it previously with no issue... I don't understand why it's no longer working that way :( – Logos – 2015-04-02T19:55:51.750
2:( That sounds like a pain. A couple thoughts: One, are the changed phrases distinctive enough that you can search on the original portion? For example, if the original phrase was "ten-ton gorilla" and it was changed to "blue twenty-ton gorilla," you could search on "-ton gorilla." The other is whether a macro to quickly toggle between "Final Showing Markup" and "Final" would be useful. – Kelly Tessena Keck – 2015-04-02T20:09:49.143
It is a huge pain. Badly set up CMS is what it boils down to.
I do search to find the right general places already, but we're talking dozens of minor changes to contract language per page - often just a couple words per place. That was what made the copy and paste from the "showing markup" so handy when it was working to only copy the "final" portion - I could very easily go from one to the other without losing my place, etc. Toggling between modes really screws up my workflow as the page reflows and I lose my place :P Copying and pasting to an intermediary word doc seems best so far – Logos – 2015-04-06T23:14:04.413
1Could something have changed with the CMS itself? (If you go from Word doc to Word doc, the settings in both affect the result, so maybe the issue is the CMS.) – Kelly Tessena Keck – 2015-04-07T12:27:57.297
The CMS is just a PHTML file, open for editing in PHPStorm, so I doubt that PHPStorm is doing or has ever done anything to the clipboard's contents on paste. – Logos – 2015-04-07T19:08:56.113
-1
On the Review tab, there's a dropdown menu to choose what you want to display:
I think this is a bit different in Office 2013, but it's there. Select Final and the deleted text won't be shown, and then you can copy only the final text to any text-box.
Molx
Posted 2015-03-30T23:01:16.740
Reputation: 192
Unfortunately that hides the strike through text, and I need to be able to see what's being deleted so I can find it in the plaintext version. – Logos – 2015-04-01T00:54:54.157
This doesn't work. Although the document in word shows only the final, the copied text has the markup. – GreenAsJade – 2017-02-23T01:44:14.897
Do you have track changes turned off in the document you're copying to? – Kelly Tessena Keck – 2015-03-31T12:20:53.290
@kelly: No, I do not have track changes turned off - the document I am copying to is actually a plaintext file (.txt). However, copying and pasting to another word doc produces the same effect. – Logos – 2015-03-31T15:49:36.070