How to: Use Track changes in OpenOffice

martes, 3 de mayo de 2011

Most people are used to work in Microsoft Work with the function Track Changes. In fact, it's a very good tool, specially for revising a document. 

Recently, the public administration has decided to set up the suite OpenOffice. It's free, and it's similar to Microsoft Office, so they are saving money there. However, it has its disadvantages, for example, there are some functions with changed names. It shouldn't be a problem because as we all know, the public administration has enough helpdesk staff to help the other workers in the migration process. Or not? 

Anyway, if you want to know how to use it, continue reading ;-)

First of all, you will need to open OpenOffice Writer. I've written an example of a wrong sentence to show you how the function works. Can you find the mistake in the sentence? I'm sure you can ;-)

Then, you have to make sure that the function is on. To check it or activate it, go to edit menu, then changes, and click on rec (I'm not sure about the real name of it in the English version, in the Spanish one it's called Editar > Modificaciones > Grabar). Moreover, don't forget to click on show (mostrar) so it is activated too. If not, you won't see the changes.

Next, as you'll see, I've changed the text by deleting the first letter and then writing the correct character. Even tough the change is done it's not a very attractive result since the deleted text and the new text have the same colour.

To fix it, we are going to custom the function by changing the colours of the deleted and new text. You will need to click on the Tools menu, then click on Options and Changes in the OpenOffice Writer group. Once again in Spainsh (Herramientas > Opciones > Cambios dentro del grupo de opciones de Open Office Writer). You are going to be capable of changing the colour as you see in the image.

Finally, the result is this:

 I really hope this post help you and If you have any question please comment ;-)

:) Maggie :)