I want to retain the existing track changes

Aspose.Words Product Family
1

Hello Experts,
I have a document that already contains tracked changes from two authors. When I process this document through our application, the application suggests additional changes, which appear as a new author’s tracked changes.

These new changes are generated using Aspose’s compare() method, where we compare the original document (after accepting all existing changes) with the updated document produced by our application. As a result, only the new tracked changes from our application are shown in the final document, while the original tracked changes are lost.

I want to retain the existing tracked changes along with the newly suggested changes in the final document.

Could you please suggest if there’s any other method or feature in Aspose (or any other library) that can help preserve both the original and newly added tracked changes?
Thanks,
Param
Pearson technology

2

@parampv

To retain both the existing tracked changes and the new changes suggested by your application, follow these steps:

  1. Do Not Accept Existing Changes: Ensure that you do not accept the existing tracked changes in the original document. This will allow them to remain in the document.

  2. Use the Compare Method: Call the Compare() method on the original document that still contains the existing tracked changes. This will enable the new changes to be added as additional tracked changes.

Here’s a sample code snippet to illustrate this:

// Load the original document with existing tracked changes
Document originalDoc = new Document("original.docx");

// Load the updated document produced by your application
Document updatedDoc = new Document("updated.docx");

// Compare the documents
originalDoc.Compare(updatedDoc, "New Author", DateTime.Now);

// Save the final document with both existing and new tracked changes
originalDoc.Save("final_document_with_changes.docx");

By following this approach, you should be able to preserve both the original tracked changes and the new changes suggested by your application.

3

@parampv What you are asking about is Combine Revision feature. Unfortunately, Aspose.Words does not support Combine feature (MS Word Review Tab > Compare > Combine ). This feature request is logged as WORDSNET-16956 and is not yet scheduled for development.

4

I am getting an exception when we use compare method, if the documents has track changes.

5

Is there any other way Aspose supports this feature? The business requires retaining the existing tracked changes together with the newly added ones.

When we can expect WORDSNET-16956 ?

6

@parampv

This is an expected behavior. The documents to be compared should not have revisions.

No, unfortunately, there is no workaround. Unfortunately, development of this feature is not yet scheduled. So at the moment we cannot provide you any estimates.