Tracking Changes

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How do you add a comment when making a change? Comment field is in Manage but no way to add?

No support to protect? Document owner wants to approve all changes if set to record but useless if anyone who can edit can disable record or accept all changes.

Change Tracking is a primary requirement for collaborated documents, so this is important to work properly.

Or maybe I’m missing a setting somewhere? Search turned up nothing on this.

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Hey @SkyKing,

Thanks for the “Tracked Changes” questions.

How do you add a comment when making a change? Comment field is in Manage but no way to add?

When you get into the “Manage Changes” window, you’ll see 4 columns:

  • Action
  • Author
  • Date
  • Comment

That 4th “Comment” column is a little weird… you’re able to get information in there by:

  • “Insert Track Change Comment”

Side Note: You are able to do this in desktop:

  • LibreOffice
  • Collabora Office

Currently, you ARE NOT able to do this in:

  • Collabora Online (as of 22.05)

How To Get Text Into “Manage Changes” Comments Column

Method 1: Buttons

You need to enable the “Track Changes” toolbar:

  • View > Toolbars > Track Changes

and you’ll have access to a few more advanced buttons:

Collabora.Office.23.05.-.Insert.Track.Change.Comment
Collabora.Office.23.05.-.Insert.Track.Change.Comment960×695 16.4 KB

One is:

  • Insert Comment (Ctrl+Alt+C)
    • THIS is the one everyone uses to insert comment bubbles within a document.

and the other button is:

  • Insert Track Change Comment
    • THIS is the one that adds comments inside of Tracked Changes.
    • These comments will then appear in the Manage Changes “Comment” column.

Method 2: Menus

In the Standard UI, you can:

  • Edit > Track Changes > Comment

For more information on this, see:

and the LibreOffice Writer 7.5 User Guide, especially:

  • Chapter 3: “Working with Text: Advanced” > Adding other comments

No support to protect? Document owner wants to approve all changes if set to record but useless if anyone who can edit can disable record or accept all changes.

See the Collabora Help file for “Feature Locking”:

https://sdk.collaboraonline.com/docs/installation/Configuration.html?highlight=readonly#feature-locking

Or maybe I’m missing a setting somewhere? Search turned up nothing on this.

Yes, this “Manage Changes”/“Track Changes” + Comment thing had me stumped too.

I had to fiddle around with a sample document and dig deep into the LO User Guides to figure this one out. :stuck_out_tongue:

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Side Note #2: As of today, Collabora Online’s “Manage Changes” menu is also not converted to a JSDialog yet. Follow this Github bug for the latest news on that: