Tracking Changes in a Document

[NoNonsense]

Hello everyone. I'm trying to write a VBA code to track a Word document and am having trouble. In essence, I want a popup window to appear that lists the username, date, time it was opened, length of time that the document was worked on, and specific reference to what was changed in the document.

Any help would be appreciated!

[macropod]

Any reason for not relying on Word's 'Track Changes' function? Granted, it doesn't give stats on how long the document was opened (which is ptretty meaningless if the user went to lunch after editing & before saving), but it does log the date & time of the changes, by username.

[NoNonsense]

Word tracker does show changes made but I want something that can potentially be presented in an audit. And a popup that had a list of all changes made over the life of the document would be preferable.

[Frosty]

There is no single right answer to this question.

If the native feature of Track Changes in Word, which is highly robust, does not provide what you're looking for (and, in addition, the statistics about a document which you can display either in the File Tab in Word 2010, or the document properties in earlier versions), then I think you may end up having to hire someone.

Especially if you're trying to present something as an audit-- are you trying to "data mine" a document you've been given by an adverse party? Or are you trying to set up a self-documenting feature within your own company? Just the answer of why you want to do this will change what is possible and/or likely.

Some of these document statistics are relatively easy to get and present in a single place... some are not. And depending on the version of Word you are using, it can be very difficult (if not impossible) to enforce document tracking over the entire life-cycle of a document only through VBA. You would probably need to get your network engineers/Group Policy administrators to be involved.

Hope this points you in the right direction...

[macropod]

Personally, with a requirement such as this, I think you'll need a document management system that keeps a backup copy of the entire document every time a user edits it (ie closes after making changes) instead of relying on 'Track' changes. Word's 'Track Changes' feature won't tell you anything about changes that have been deleted, rejected or accepted - only the ones currently being tracked, and users can easily disable it. With a document management system, whenever you want to know who changed what and when, you can use Word's 'compare' feature to identify the changes.