Last Reviewed: February 15, 2005

Article: DTS0200

 

Applies to: dtSearch 6.5 and later

Symptom

Deleted text appears in Microsoft Word documents with strikeout markings, like this:  this was deleted.

Cause

Microsoft Word has a "Track Changes" feature that can record all modifications to a document as they are made.   The modifications may or may not be visible when you open the document in Word, depending on your Microsoft Word settings.

dtSearch products will index and search all text that it finds in a document, including changes left in a document by Microsoft Word resulting from its "Track Changes" feature.

Resolution

To remove "track changes" text from MS Word documents, there are several options:

1.  Recommended:  Print or convert your MS Word documents to PDF.  There are products that will batch convert multiple .DOC files in one step, such as ScanSoft's PDF Converter Professional and AdLib:

    http://www.scansoft.com/pdfconverter/features.asp

    http://www.adlibsys.com/AdLib-N-Info-PDFCreation.html

2.  Use the Reviewing Toolbar in MS Word to "accept" all changes in each individual document.  For more information, see:
    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011394121033.aspx

3.  Use an MS Office utility to remove "track changes" from documents. For more information, see:

    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=144E54ED-D43E-42CA-BC7B-5446D34E5360&displaylang=en

After removing "track changes" text you will need to update your indexes with dtSearch so the removed text will no longer be searchable.