Anonymize comments and recorded changes on a file level

[datka]

In academic peer reviewing, one often needs to provide anonymous feedback on articles. I am thus looking for a possibility of hiding and revealing my user data in comments and recorded / tracking mode changes on a per-document / per-file basis.

The suggestion of removing the data globally in Tools > Options > User Data, as suggested here, doesn’t work, because it’s very cumbersome to restart the entire LibreOffice, which involves closing all open documents, to save just one file, just in order to then reintroduce the name again to save another, etc…

Also, one needs to have your name saved there so that LibreOffice would be able to save the last position in Writer, as suggested here.

Deleting user data in File > Properties doesn’t remove the name from comments and recorded changes, as discussed here.

Any ideas?

If this doesn’t exist yet, I think it’d worth a feature request.

[BrianMichaelNapoletano]

I second this idea. I arrived here looking for a way to do the same thing for the same reason. I have not found any information, and will probably need to send my review as a separate document, without the edits I had hoped to suggest. An option to provide anonymous comments for peer review would be extremely useful. I think Google Docs allows this.

[Flimm]

I don’t understand why this question was closed.

[CarloPiana]

Hi, I also have this issue for the same reasons.

I scripted a workaround, since it’s a more common issue than one would think (it also works for when I redline contracts with client and have to pass a consolidated version to the other party).

It’s in GitHub - kappapiana/script and the script works only for Linux (think it’s easily ported though).

The script itself is called “anonymize.sh”. Comments and forks + pull requests much appreciated.

Cheers

Carlo