LibreOffice 26.2.3.2 (64bit)
Windows 10 (Home & Student 64bit)
I’m an editor and use tracked changes in all my documents. Recently (maybe after the last update, but not sure) I’ve been having problems with tracked changes in the footnotes.
After saving the document and closing it, then opening it again at a later time I will find some errors in some (not all) footnotes. First, parts of some words are shown as deleted, even though I had not deleted those sections (e.g., the “uca” in education may be crossed out). Sometimes a section of text I moved from one place to another will show up as normal (unedited/accepted) text in both places (one should be crossed out and one displayed as added text). Lastly, if I delete a letter and replace it with another both letters will appear in the word with no tracked changes (e.g., “Sstatute”: “S” deleted, “s” added).
If I correct the errors and make sure all the footnotes are correct before closing the document, the next time I open it errors will often appear in a different footnote.
Note: the documents are in .DOCX format as I need to share them with MS Office users.
If anyone has suggestions I would be very grateful as this problem adds hours to my work.
Laurence
Thank you for the links. I have yet to try the Trouble-Shooting mode - I hope to do that tomorrow.
I realise there are compatibility issues between .docx and .odt, but unfortunately I have no choice as the clients need .docx.
Additional information:
after studying the problem further, part of the issue seems to be that the Track Change edits seem to be shifted one character to the right (excluding spaces).
Image one shows the original edit and tracking. Image 2 (in the next post) shows the error after closing and opening the file.
I have read about several incompatibilities or bugs with the Writer revision when comparing Word documents.
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The best way to work with LibreOffice is to use the native file format (
*.odtfor Writer) and when you have to share it in other formats, export it to those formats, but always keep the original in updated ODT format. -
The only thing I can think of is to convert the .docx files to odt, do the review only with that format and then export them if you must to share
Hello,
thank you for the advice. Yes, I am aware of compatibility issues and have had to work around some of them. I did try the workflow docx-odt-docx, but there were several occasions where MS Office could not open the file (indicating that the file was corrupt) after I had edited it in LibreOffice as an odt. So, for me, that isn’t a solution I can use unfortunately.
Thanks again.
Well, that just shows that the conversion filters in LibreOffice work well for Docx input and output.
Internally, Writer always operates as an ODT engine.
Hello,
sorry I don’t understand. Could you explain further what you mean?
In the cases I mentioned I was able to edit the file fine in LO as an odt. The problem came when I saved it (in LO) as a docx file. For these particular cases MS Office was not able to open them. So they would not be usable for my client.
Thanks
Click on the link I provided above, and pay particular attention to the graphic.