Microsoft Word question...

[Gary Compton]

Lets say you have finished your WIP and it has been edited.

Is there anyway you can set the default text colour which is black on mine to another colour. So if you make any additions they will show as red so the editor can pick them up easily?

Cant be bothered to highlight manually so looking for a work-around.

PS: My editor does not use the "track changes," function

 

[Overread]

You can manually change the text colour in any word software. It should be on the main bar tab along the top where you can change the text colour (saying that MS keep changing the interface around so much in word that with modern word software I can never find anything!)

It should be a colour selection option just like in the text window for typing replies in the threads here. (icon just right of the underline option)

 

[Gary Compton]

You can manually change the text colour in any word software. It should be on the main bar tab along the top where you can change the text colour (saying that MS keep changing the interface around so much in word that with modern word software I can never find anything!)

It should be a colour selection option just like in the text window for typing replies in the threads here. (icon just right of the underline option)

Thanks OR. I know I can hi-light text and change the colour. What I am trying to do is change the default text colour which is black to red.

 

[HareBrain]

Tell your editor not to be such a luddite. Who's employing who here?

 

[Mr Orange]

Don't think so Gary. No matter what colour you have set it to, when you click in a section of text the colour will automatically change back to the colour of the surrounding text. You could try formatting the style but i think that will change everything to red

You can set track changes to only change the colour but then if that doesn't work for your editor....

 

[Gary Compton]

Tell your editor not to be such a luddite. Who's employing who here?

Jeffasaurus Rex HB

PS This was really for me before his lawyers get involved LOL

 

[Hex]

Isn't that what Track Changes is for?

The only thing I can think of -- which isn't an answer but a sort of workaround -- is having a macro that'll let you change the colour with a keyboard combination instead of faffing around with toolbar buttons.

There's also Compare documents, which should show your editor quickly and easily what has changed in the new doc compared to the old?

 

[Phyrebrat]

Page setup - select the font - select font colour - click default. Any new docs should default to red. You may have to open a new Doc and copy/ paste your old data in before you annotate. This is how I mark homework

pH

 

[jastius]

when i ran out of black ink and had a paper to print and submit, i highlighted all the text went to font and changed the font colour to blue. then it printed where it wouldn't before. i believe that was word/office.

 

[Dozmonic]

Isn't that what Track Changes is for?

The only thing I can think of -- which isn't an answer but a sort of workaround -- is having a macro that'll let you change the colour with a keyboard combination instead of faffing around with toolbar buttons.

There's also Compare documents, which should show your editor quickly and easily what has changed in the new doc compared to the old?

I'd do it this way, using autohotkey to do the macro (because I'm just familiar with it)

 

[Boneman]

Trackchanges? What's that?

 

[charande]

Which version of Word are you using?

Tracking changes is an option that shows what changes are being made to the text. Every bit of deleted text shows on the margin in a red box, every bit of added text shows in red. This option is frequently used by editors. In Word 2003: Tools --> Track changes or Ctrl+Shift+E. It's unavailable in Word Starter, and I don't have Word 2007 so I can't check where it is

 

[Beef]

It's ctrl+shift+E in 2013 as well, so presumably it's the same in 2007 and 2010 as well. Wow, thats useful

 

[Ursa major]

Lets say you have finished your WIP and it has been edited.

Is there anyway you can set the default text colour which is black on mine to another colour. So if you make any additions they will show as red so the editor can pick them up easily?

Cant be bothered to highlight manually so looking for a work-around.

PS: My editor does not use the "track changes," function

I don't think that you can do this automatically: as Mr Orange says, whenever you add anything it takes on the appearance of whatever is already at the cursor (which means, in practice, that it'll look like the text to the immediate left of the cursor).


Regarding change tracking... It doesn't matter if your editor has luddite tendencies. Simply use Word's Compare function, in which you select the document you sent for editing, select the document returned by your editor and then put the comparison into a new document (because you don't want to overwrite the two source documents). You should then have a document that shows all the changes between the two sources.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Couldn't you create a new formatting style?

 

[Ursa major]

You can create all the styles you like, but you still have to apply them where you want them before you start typing something you want to be in that style.


It so happens that my WiP has dozens of styles** - for the PoV characters (and dialogue and thoughts) and the dialogue of major non-PoV characters***. Word still applies whatever style happens to be present at the cursor.



** - Mostly character (as opposed to paragraph) styles: just because Character A is narrating, it doesn't mean the paragraph won't inlude the dialogue of, say, Character B (obviously).

*** - I use it to make sure - because reading (even out aloud) is not 100% perfect for this - that words and phrases that a character wouldn't use (or might only use in dialogue, but not in narration) don't slip in. (I wish I was the sort of writer who could guarantee that they were so in the mind of each character that they rarely if ever slip out of the voice of that character.)

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Simply use Word's Compare function, in which you select the document you sent for editing, select the document returned by your editor and then put the comparison into a new document (because you don't want to overwrite the two source documents). You should then have a document that shows all the changes between the two sources.

Ooh, I like that! I've never tried that before -- or even heard of it!