Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Examining Tracked Changes in a Macro.

Examining Tracked Changes in a Macro

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 31, 2015)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


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If you need to develop a macro to process a document in which changes have been tracked (using the Track Changes feature), you may wonder how you can determine the number of changes in the document and how you can look at each of the changes, programmatically. It isn't that tough to do if you remember that the changes are organized in using the Revisions collection. This means that you can determine the number of changes using this code:

iNumChanges = ActiveDocument.Revisions.Count

Just like any other collection, you can step through each member of the Revisions collection and figure out various information about the change represented in the member. While the details of what properties and methods belong to the Revisions collection is much too voluminous for this tip, you can determine the type of each change by looking at the Type property, in this manner:

vChange = ActiveDocument.Revisions(1).Type

At this point vChange will be equal to one of 14 possible revision types. These revision types can be referenced by the built-in constants wdNoRevision, wdRevisionDelete, wdRevisionInsert, wdRevisionParagraphProperty, wdRevisionReconcile, wdRevisionSectionProperty, wdRevisionStyleDefinition, wdRevisionConflict, wdRevisionDisplayField, wdRevisionParagraphNumber, wdRevisionProperty, wdRevisionReplace, wdRevisionStyle, and wdRevisionTableProperty.

Additional information can be found in Word's Help system or by searching the Internet for the phrase "revisions collection".

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8914) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Examining Tracked Changes in a Macro.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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Comments

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What is six minus 4?

2015-11-01 07:05:10

Ken Endacott

Some other useful statements.

Turn display of revisions on or off:
ActiveDocument.ShowRevisions = True

Show specific revisions, set to True or False as requited:
ActiveWindow.View.ShowFormatChanges = True
ActiveWindow.View. ShowInsertionsAndDeletions = True
ActiveWindow.View .ShowComments = True

Display the Track Changes option form:
Call Dialogs(wdDialogToolsOptionsTrackChanges).Show

Putting these statements into a macro that prompts to remove individual revisions from the current cursor position forward:
Sub RemoveIndividualRevisions()
Dim Rv As Revision
Dim aRange As Range
Dim k As Long
ActiveDocument.ShowRevisions = True
ActiveWindow.View.ShowFormatChanges = True
ActiveWindow.View.ShowInsertionsAndDeletions = True
ActiveWindow.View.ShowComments = False
Set aRange = Selection.Range
aRange.End = ActiveDocument.Range.End
For Each Rv In aRange.Revisions
Rv.Range.Select
k = MsgBox("Do you want to remove this revision", vbYesNoCancel, "Track Change Revisions")
If k = vbCancel Then Exit Sub
If k = vbYes Then Rv.Accept
Next Rv
End Sub


2015-10-31 20:32:43

Colin Pernet

Thanks from Colin In Australia


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