Minimize file size=images in Word (Word2000-SR1-WinNT4.0-SP6)

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Okay. Not sure how to profile this one but I’ll give it a shot. We have lawyers who will accept documents created either by the client or whomever. The docs are e-mailed to them. They make revisions to this documents, save the work, and then return documents by e-mail. And then the docs are then e-mailed back. The other side/client/whomever makes changes. They are sent back to our law firm. Yep. The lawyer’s asst then saves that doc as v.2 or whatever. They make changes. Then they want a redline. Hello! This is the real world: you are leaving ourself open for big problems. Don’t even GO THERE! How can I try to explain to our guys that we CAN’T &&%$# DO THIS & STIlL HAVE STABLE DOCUMENT. Advice please!

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Hey Patricia. Are you saying that you can’t do a redline because of the images? The title of your post is a little confusing. In any event, I’m also at a law firm, and you have my sympathies for what appears to be a confusing issue. That said….

The biggest problems I’ve seen with comparing documents using Word’s native functionality is that users attempt to combine the Track Changes feature with the Compare Documents feature, and that isn’t possible. Be sure that your users are not tracking changes in the document (or that they have completely accepted all of the changes in the v2 document and turned off track changes) before comparing it to the v1 of the document.

Alternately, you could use a third-party product like DeltaView (we’re using that here). The problem with 3rd party products (at least all of them I’ve seen) is that you get what *looks* like redlined document, in that additions are underlined and deletions are stricken, but you don’t have the ability to accept/reject certain of those changes, and you don’t see who made which changes (especially important if you have multiple attorneys working on the same document).

Just my thoughts…

klyjen

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The title of post is iindded confusing and I’m not sure just HOW I managed that … maybe edited the subject but not sufficiently. It was a “DeltaView” day .. a non-happening for three major deals. I probably should have titled the post “RANT”. For example, these 3 docs were created outside of our firm (should have been converted by our lawyers but wasn’t – big surprise, huh?), we edit, e-mail back to the client and/or other side, they make changes, we edit, resend. In one document I suspect the images in the documents were inserted at 100% instead of downsizing so the file size is about 2900 KB for an 80 page document with not very complex graphics (about 6). And yes, Track Changes/Compare Documents ‘feature’ is a huge problem. Especially when ‘accept or reject all changes’ has not been chosen and then on top of that mess they try to use DeltaView or CompareRite. For 3 of our lawyers on the day I posted this confusing post one of them had used Compare Documents (Track Changes enabled), e-mailed back and forth and then wondered why he could not get DeltaView to perform.
Thanks for your response.
BTW just downloaded D.V. 2.7 – how’s the performance for your firm? Any problems?

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Not sure with DV, but common cause of bloating with CompareRite was conversion to RTF output disguised as a .DOC files. One of my partners tried to send out a 24 MB attachment several times before we spotted it when doing a Save As (Word typically reveals the existing format in the Save As dialog, and there it was).

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Patricia,

My sympathies re the non-compares.
A couple of things re DV:

DV has a known problem with vector graphics (bitmaps are OK) – try removing the graphics in both versions and rerunning the DV (there is a setting in redline options to ignore embedded images and graphics, but it just doesn’t work). This problem still exists in version 2.7 but I hear it’s supposed to fixed in version 2.8, which is due out in a couple of months.

Another last-gasp thing to try with non-DVs is: for both versions to be compared, save them as HTML docs (and close them). Then re-open and save as Word docs. The filesize will about double, but this sometimes enables problem docs to be DV’ed.

We have DV 2.5.1 installed and are testing 2.7. Generally it works much better; approx. 50% of our problem docs using 2.5.1 come out OK using 2.7. Another big improvement is that when it does hit an error, it exits out of the compare gracefully but the application doesn’t crash as it’s prone to do with 2.5.1. Unfortunately there is one obscure feature that’s in our documents, which 2.5.1 handles better than 2.7, so this is delaying our moving to 2.7. Supposedly also to be fixed in version 2.8.

Oh yes one other thing: although leaving Track Changes in a document to be compared was a big problem with CompareRite, it shouldn’t be with DeltaView – I was advised that one of the first things DV does to Word files is check for track changes and accept all if found.

Gary

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Hey patricia.

I agree with jscher–sending documents back and forth tends to be too convenient, and requesting that attorneys simply have the client/outside party fax a marked-up or redlined copy back would seem to double the work, as two people would then be entering the same changes.

Re: DeltaView–I like it, so far. We’re just rolling it out now. My Document Center has found one document that simply didn’t compare–Deltaview would run through it’s entire thing, and show no changes in an obviously changed document. Most of the time, though, it appears to be working cleanly. We’re using 2.6.

But I am also a fan of track changes (which I know a lot of people dislike). So, in comparison, my problem is that DeltaView doesn’t give me a redlined version that I can use for anything–I can’t accept/reject changes on a user-by-user or page-by-page basis. While having a document that shows me the changes is useful if Track Changes *hasn’t* been used, the value of that pales in comparison to being able to choose which changes to accept or reject. In my opinion, anyway. Track changes works, but it requires that users know what they are doing. I have had attorneys who made a point of learning how to use it, and they had great success (even “protecting” documents when they sent them to clients via e-mail but hiding changes, so that the clients could simply make their changes in the document but when we got it back, we could see what the client had done). Obviously, there are also attorneys who don’t understand how to use it, and want to do what your attorney wants to do–combine two completely different features (comparison and track changes), which inevitably leads to horrid results. However, Gary indicates below that DeltaView should recognize that changes have been tracked in a document and should accept them all before performing the comparison, which is a great feature. I wasn’t aware of that.

As for reviewing documents that clients have modified–I always recommend that secretaries/attorneys use what we call the Styles Map (the “style area width” feature available while working in normal view) so that they can see what logic, if any, a client followed while working on a document. It makes it easier to see what the client was doing, and makes cleanup easier (this I say from experience–four years as a litigation legal secretary a while back!). You may already encourage that, but it has made such a difference (and always garnered ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahhs’ when I was a trainer) that I feel compelled to mention it, just in case.

Phew. That was a lot. I got wordy.

klyjen

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Gary, Jscher and Klyjen:
Gary – I did not know that about vector graphics and there are graphics in the two huge docs. And the HTML tip – will try tomorrow. Great to know that DV is smart enough to do the Track Changes check & enable. We TRY to get our newest Word users (our law firm merged with another using WP8 – say, have you noticed there’s a lot of that going around these days?) and are just learning Word) to turn on the style area.
Did I ever mention that you guys – and this site – are the BEST! Where else can you get such an instant response – and commiseration.

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I guess a different question is, what’s the alternative? Unless someone has a macro to painstakingly build a clean document from one that has gone through many hands the way you’re describing, it’s quite difficult not to carry the seeds of corruption from one version (meaning document, not Word’s “versions”) to the next. I know that we occasionally have a document blow up here, but it’s so rare that the convenience of simply backing-and-forthing will probably continue to win out.

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Thanks jscher! And as for alternatives . . . well, we keep telling the lawyers if we have carriage of the file then revisions should be on our side only & to let the other side do a markup and faxback for so we can revise thereby lessening the chances of corruption. But that would be the ideal situation. Alas … this rarely happens. Ideally I would like to see our templates re-attached to documents & extraneous ‘foreign’ styles removed after being e-mailed outside the firm but that will be another non-event I’m afraid. End of my Rant ‘n Rave.

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