Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 19, 2021)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365
Jackie uses Track Changes regularly in her department. She notes that it would be nice to be able to analyze a marked-up document to get a count of how many changes and how many comments were made by the various editors on the document.
Word does not provide that ability. You can, however, create a macro that may give you the information you desire. The following example steps through each revision in a document and accumulates the editor names and a count of each editor's changes.
Sub CountReviewers() Dim J As Integer Dim Cnt As Integer Dim sMsg As String Dim Authors(299) As String Dim aCount(299) As Long Dim aRev As Revision Dim bNew As Boolean Cnt = 0 On Error GoTo RevNext For Each aRev In ActiveDocument.Revisions ' Check to see if this is a new author bNew = True For J = 1 To Cnt If aRev.Author = Authors(J) Then ' Already have author aCount(J) = aCount(J) + 1 bNew = False End If Next J If bNew Then ' New author; add to list Cnt = Cnt + 1 Authors(Cnt) = aRev.Author aCount(Cnt) = 1 End If RevNext: Next aRev ' Put together and display final report sMsg = "" For J = 1 To Cnt sMsg = sMsg & Authors(J) & " (" & Trim(Str(aCount(J))) & ")" & vbCrLf Next J sMsg = sMsg & "Total revisions:" & Str(ActiveDocument.Range.Revisions.Count) MsgBox sMsg End Sub
There are a few things to remember when using a macro like this. First, it is hard-coded to handle up to 299 editors on the document. If you have more, just increase the number of elements by which the Authors() and aCount() arrays are dimensioned. Second, if your document is long and has a lot of edits, it can take a while for the macro to run. So, the longer and more heavily edited the document, the more patient you'll need to be.
Finally, it is possible that the macro may ingloriously crash with some documents. (Not all, but just some.) This seems to happen most often with documents that have a tracked change caused by an automatic field change. The error that is thrown by such a scenario cannot be trapped for some reason, as this problem seems to be rooted in either a VBA or Excel error.
Note:
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13873) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.
Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 2013 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access) with VBA programming, using it for writing macros, automating Office applications, and creating custom applications. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2013 today!
When you use Track Changes in a document, Word marks everything that changes. (Makes sense, huh?) If an editor makes a ...
Discover MoreTrack Changes is a great tool; it allows you to see what changes were made in a document and then determine whether you ...
Discover MoreTrack Changes is a powerful tool to help you know what has been changed in a document. You may want to make sure that ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2021-07-26 11:57:55
Richard Curtis
In Word 365, the revieweing pane displays the number of revisions in the document. Show Markup > Specific People can be limited to one author to show the number of relevant changes. This would rapidly become tedious for 299 authors though (see article).
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2024 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments