Microsoft Office Word 2003: Collaboration

Introduction:
In your work, you may find that you need to create and edit text documents with another person, or with a group, or you may wish to create collaborative exercises for your class. Fortunately, Word takes into consideration this potential, and comes equipped with several features that make the group reviewing process easier.

Reviewing toolbar:
In order to edit and work in a collaborative setting, you should use the "Reviewing toolbar." You can bring this toolbar up by navigating to the “View” menu bar, and select “Toolbars” >> “Reviewing.” Once the toolbar appears, you will see a set of icons that you should start to learn.  Note that the toolbar contains many other buttons and options that may not immediately be available.  Depending upon which version of Word you are using, these icons may appear slightly different.

1. Display for Review:
   Choose which version of the document you wish to view for review.
2. Show:
   Choose which items you wish to have shown in your document while reviewing.
3. Previous:
   View the previous change.
4. Next:
   View the next change.
5. Accept Change:
   Accept the current change.
6. Reject Change / Delete Comment:
   Reject the current change, or delete the current comment.
7. Insert Comment:
   Insert a comment while reviewing.
8. Highlight:
   Highlight a certain section of the document; default color is yellow.
9. Track Changes:
   Toggle on/off the ability to track changes while working on a document.
10. Reviewing Pane:
    Open a new (large) window at the bottom of the screen that keeps track of all changes made to a document.

Commenting:
When reviewing someone else's work, you may find it useful to make annotations in the document without actually changing the document itself. It is also useful, for example, in reading drafts or grading online. To insert a comment, you must first select text with the cursor. When the desired text is highlighted, navigate to the menu bar and select “Insert” >> “Comment” (or click the “Insert Comment” button).

"Comment" areas will appear in the margin. Word will highlight the text you wish to comment on, and allow you to type in the comments regarding the highlighted text. Each comment you make will be numbered by Word, and appear in the “Comments” area in the margins.

To remove a comment, first click the “Comment” area, and click “Reject Change / Delete Comment” on the Revision toolbar.

More about Track Changes:
This feature allows you to keep track of the changes you make to a document while you edit or make suggestions for revisions. Make sure a document is open in Word. Go to the “Tools” menu and select “Track Changes.”

To change the highlight color and other formatting that Word uses to identify changes, go to the menu bar and select Tools >> Options, and then select the "Track Changes" tab.

In this menu, you can change colors, and other formatting options.  If you want to indicate deletions without revealing exact text, make sure you are in the "Track Changes" tab under Tools >> Options.  For example, as a way to alter the way Word displays the changes, in the "Markup" drop down menus under "Deleted Text," replace the default "strikethrough" formatting with # or ^. The character # or ^ will replace deleted text.


Merging Tracked Changes:
When you are working in a group in which a document is being revised and edited by several people, you may want to consolidate all the changes and comments made by others. Different reviewers will be modifying the same document. So, by merging tracked changes, you can merge all changes into the original document.
To merge track changes, you must make sure you have the original document open in Word. Then, go to the “Tools” menu and select “Compare and Merge Documents.”

Open a document that has changes in it that you wish to merge with the original document. Repeat this processes until you have merged all of the desired documents to the original documents. After you have merged all the tracked changes, you can review comments made by other people, and then accept or reject their changes.


Creating Master Documents:
In terms of collaborative work, master documents are an important concept to understand. A master document contains a collection of related documents, so you can use master documents to organize large documents. When working with a group, you can save a master document for the purpose of sharing it with others, so that different people can work on the document at the same time.
Open the document you want to save as the master document in Word. First, you must make sure you are in the "Outline View." To access this view, go to the “View” menu and select “Outline.”

Here, you must assign headings, since Word will recognize the headings as the beginnings of the subdocuments. To add a heading, select the desired text and select a heading option from there “Heading” drop-down of the Standard Toolbar. This will insert the heading, and Word will recognize it as a subdocument within a master document. When you save the master document, Word assigns names to each subdocument based on the text you use in the outline headings. You can also convert an existing document to a master document and then divide it into subdocuments, or you can add existing documents to a master document to make them subdocuments.

You can navigate through a master document by using the toolbar that appears when you are in the Outline view. The "Promote" and "Demote" arrows turns selected text into different types of headings, whereas the "Demote to body text" arrow removes the Heading attribute from text, turning it into standard body text. There are also buttons that allow you to create, insert and remove subdocuments. The "Lock Document" button allows you to make the document viewable, but not writable. You can make an area of a master document unlocked by expanding the subdocuments, selecting the desired subdocument, and an on the Outlining toolbar, selecting "Lock Document.”


Versioning:
When working with several people on one document, you may have the need to save multiple versions of the same document. This is helpful in situations where you may need to go back and refer to an older revision of a document, or if you need a backup of an old version of a file. Using versioning in Word will help you to accomplish such tasks.
To save the current version of a document, go to the “File” menu and select “Versions.” Click on "Save Now." In the text box "Comments on version," type in some text that will describe the currently save version of the document.

Please note that since you will, in essence, be saving versions of documents to be archived, you cannot go back and modify older versions. If you want to be able to go back and revise the document, then you should save it as its own separate document rather than a version.