Hello! I have been reading forums that mention scrivener is not compatible with word’s track changes, but am confused because I used to be able to import a word document and the comments were intact while viewing in scrivener. I have either forgotten how I did it, or something has changed that no longer allows me to do so! I understand scrivener is not meant to be compatible with track changes, but I need to see the comments in the word docs, and that’s not happening even when I just import as a file (let alone if I copy and paste into draft).
Can someone please help me understand if something changed or if I’ve just forgotten some trick I did before to ensure comments are visible? I could delete comments in scrivener view just as I could in word…
thanks much, I’m a dissertation student with a lot of word docs that I do not want to work on individually in word- that’s why I have scrivener!
warmly,
sarah
Three ideas…
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Imported Word docs retain comments, but not tracked changes.
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You can create aliases in Finder to your Word files and drag those aliases into your reference folder. The aliases can then be opened in Word from within Scrivener, showing the tracked changes and comments, of course.
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You can make PDFs of the Word files with tracked changes and comments shown. You can import those into Scrivener and work with them in Scrivener itself…especially with the editor spilt.
Thank you for responding. I think where I’m stuck is that the word docs used to retain the comments when I imported, and now they do not. Any ideas as to how to ensure they show up? Maybe it’s just something with my settings either in word or in scrivener. But now when I import a word doc, there is no right column with the comments, even if in the word doc it shows that way.
I don’t know about aliases, but will investigate further.
thanks for your quick reply!
When you say this, it makes me wonder if you know how to switch what is displayed in the Inspector pane (the right column). Do you know about the little icons at the bottom of the inspector, which allow you to switch to various views, including comments/footnotes? Sorry if that’s an obvious thing that you don’t need reiterated, but I thought I’d point it out in case you weren’t that familiar with how the inspector works.
This is covered, by the way, in the very handy “Interactive Tutorial”, which is a self-paced project you can create from the menu Help->Interactive Tutorial.
Yes, sorry, I shouldn’t have said it like that. The word document is lacking the comments that would normally appear of the right side. The scrivener inspector displays comments and footnotes just fine. But I am trying to import or copy word documents with comments that are not coming through once imported. Is there a way to post pictures here? I could better explain if I could show y’all what it used to look like and what it looks like now!
Here’s an example of a Word file imported into Scrivener with Comments included.
[attachment=1]comments.png[/attachment]
You can add images using “Upload attachment” when composing a message.
[attachment=0]add image.png[/attachment]
Just in case this can save you some effort: Are you compiling your project TO Word, and it’s not getting comments that are visible in Scrivener’s inspector? If that’s your problem, make sure to check the Compile window’s Footnotes & Comments pane. There’s a checkbox there to remove inspector comments, among other things.
If you’re losing comments that are present in Word when you import into Scrivener, maybe the “track changes” part is the issue. Since Scrivener can’t deal with TC, maybe the comments were added after you turned on the track changes feature; try accepting all changes (in a copy of the word document), and then importing that version.