Document after compare in Word does not open in eaDocX

[Jaromir Kuzelka]

I would like to consult problem of opening document which has been previously compared with another in MS Word. In that case, the structure information is lost and document does not open in the eaDocX plug-in.

Sequence is following:
1. Generate document with eaDocX
2. Update the document with any changes manually in MS Word (=revision from client, comments, …)
3. Update EA model with any changes
4. Generate new version in eaDoCX
5. Open generated document in MS Word
6. Compare changes between generated document and manually updated older version, save result to generated document (in MS Word: Review->Compare->show changes in revised document)
7. Try to open the updated generated document in eaDocX plugin
8. Document is not open, no information about sections is shown

I can provide respective files from steps 1, 2, 6 if needed (not posting them here due to confidentiality).

Thank You for resolution.
Jaromir Kuzelka

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[Ian Mitchell]

The problem is at step 6 I think.
eaDocX saves all the Profile and settings information in some XML which is saved in the Word document. If you are doing lots of copying and comparing, maybe this got lost.
Have you looked into eaDocX Collaboration Edition? This is designed to collect together all the feedback from multiple users, and let you see who have commented/changed each Ea element. It will even do the updates into EA for you. I think you should look into this.
Thanks
Ian

[Jaromir Kuzelka]

Thanks for answer. Yes, I agree, the problem is in the comparison in Word.
My question directs to how to perform the comparison correctly to avoid loss of the XML information you noticed. Or at least, what should I do to protect this information in the document, or tweak it back to document manually (copying text around Section marks?, or so).
Clients are used to this approach when reviewing new version, so I would like to use Word comparison mechanism. And it is annoying to loose all the sections and profile information and recreate it manually after every review from client.

[Ian Mitchell]

I suggest that, before you do any comparison, that you take a copy of the eaDocX-generated document, and use that to re-generate the document.
I’m sorry, but I don’t know what MS Word does when it does a document comparison.

[Jaromir Kuzelka]

Thank you for response.
Well, I think this kind of usage could be quite common. So I would suggest to investigate the behavior and make eaDocX compatible with this scenario.

I also understand that Word is behaving extremely complex and mysterious, so it is hard to make it work at any occasion.

Add “take a copy of the eaDocX generated document”: please, what is suggested long term lifecycle of documents combining both written part and generated part to avoid loss of data and structure information for eaDocX? Making copies prior to any changes does not look comfortly to me, especially in iterative tuning prior to release new version. Every wrong step could ruin the work by losing the information needed for eaDocX to generate the doc.

[Ian Mitchell]

I think we have satified this use case using the eaDocX Collaboration Edition function – did you look at that?

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