Tracking Text Changes
Craig writes:
How does one track type changes within InDesign?Quark had a XTension called black lining at one stage, is there any thing like that for InDesign?
Though I never used it myself, the same company that sells the Blacklining XT for QuarkXPress, EMS (”software development for publishers”) now has a version for Adobe InDesign CS2, Mac or Windows platforms. You can download a demo of the plug-in here.
From their site, though, I can’t tell how much it costs … per license, it’s either $395 (”Blacklining 3″) or $1195 (”Blacklining 6″). That’s a huge price difference, but I can’t find any info on the difference between the two products. Is 6 an upgrade from 3? Is one just for InDesign and the other for QuarkXPress? Neither the Purchase Product screens nor the FAQ give any clues. The Download Demo link above calls it “Blacklining for InDesign.” It’s aggravating. Well, at least there’s a demo. And an opportunity for an enterprising web designer…
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another possible solution, Adobe InCopy ($249, Mac/Windows). It’s not a plug-in, it’s a standalone program, but you can run both on the same computer if you’re the sole user.
InCopy’s Track Changes feature provides an audit trail of any text changes made to a story in an InDesign document, whether you change the text in InCopy or in InDesign. It tracks what was changed, who changed it and when. You can turn it on or off on a per-story basis.
In InDesign, or in InCopy’s Layout View, even if Track Changes was turned on and the story was heavily edited, text appears as though all edits made to the story thus far have been accepted, as shown below. (The little icon on the frame indicates the story can be edited in InCopy.)
layout view
To see the edits made to the story, switch to one of the other views in InCopy; Story or Galley. These views are mainly for copy-editing and show only minimal formatting. For Track Changes, I’ve set my InCopy Preferences to strikethrough my deletions and put a green background behind them. I specified a yellow background for my additions.
Track Changes in Story view
There’s lots more to Track Changes, but I think you get the general drift. You may find it to be the solution you’re looking for.
Just to save readers a possible headache, it should be noted that you cannot track changes to text within tables, or any text that lives in an inline object for that matter. Well, maybe the changes are tracked somewhere, but you can’t view them because these inline objects just show up as icons in Galley and Story views.
This has caused a tug-of-war between our Editorial department’s desire to track changes, and our Production department’s desire to make the files more efficient to work with.
…one more person hoping for a fix in CS3. : )
I just want to mention that Blacklining, while expensive, offers more tracking features than InCopy does. If one needs a more comprehensive edit trail for legal purposes, one should check it out. (If using InDesign, you don’t have to worry about the confusing downloads for Quark, but the BL3 is for older versions of Quark.)
Can the different Track Changes views be printed? Or would it print the text as if the changes have been accepted?
Track changes markup can be printed from InCopy, as long as you turn on the “Include tracked changes” checkbox in the Print Galley/Story dialog box. You can also export a PDF (again only from Galley/Story view) with tracked changes mark-up.
Awesome! Thanks so much!
Is there a plug-in or feature in InDesign that will alert the designer when a text change has been made in InCopy. We’re trying to go paperless, but our designers will need some sort of notification that there are changes on a page without having to open every document.
We are just making the switch to CS3 and will be incorporating InCopy into our workflow. I’ve been doing some remote work flow trial runs and have come across a problem.
For our purposes, it is necessary for a second editor to accept/reject a remote editor’s tracked changes. When I try to forward an InCopy package, the tracked changes do not show up for the second editor to accept or reject.
Is there a reason that tracked changes are not coming through when emailing (forwarding) an InCopy package?
Bailey, I’ve answered you in the comments to the post about the Remote Workflow. (If anyone else wants to weigh in on Bailey’s issue, please add to the discussion over there, thx.)
We switched over to CS3 at the beginning of this year and bought the CS3 blacklining upgrade as our financial services clients like to see tracked changes on documents. Since then, we have encountered corrupt documents, formatting being changed, old copy going back into the document and other copy deleted. We’re finding it impossible to work with.
Is there a way to prevent writers from turning off track changes in InCopy? I am sure the answer is no, but just in case HerGeekness or other Geeks:-) Know a secret, please share.
Another question, are user names computer specific? i.e. if a computer is shared, can more than one user name be assigned to note the person actually working on the document?
Does anyone have any insight as to why InCopy does not track formatting changes? (font, etc…) Most other apps that track changes track that sort of thing…