Inserted/Deleted/revised text"

  • From: Edward Marquette <emarquette@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 00:28:57 -0600 (GMT-06:00)

Let me just add a little to what Chip has already mentioned.
In converting a Word document to a WordPerfect document, you discovered two 
things: (1) a flaw in MS Word's "accept changes" function and (2) possibly a 
sloppy or ill-informed attorney.
I am an attorney, and I specialize in technology law, intellectual property, 
and information security.
First, when the other attorney made changes, it is almost certainly true that 
she was using track changes.  One may turn this on or off inside MS Word with 
control plus shift plus "E".  She may have assumed you were using Word and left 
the changes on so you could see them (nothing wrong with that), or she may have 
been sending a document that had gone through internal changes with some 
departments wanting to "give" more than others on the document (or contract 
provisions).  She, the attorney, may have given the document the final touches, 
accepted the changes, and sent the "final" document.
What you saw when you converted to WordPerfect has nothing to do with JAWS.  
WordPerfect was either converting and displaying her deliberately displayed 
changes, or WordPerfect was showing the Word metadata.  "Metadata" is data 
about the data, and this stays with a Word document even after changes are 
accepted.  That is why most attorneys will not use this feature to show 
changes.  Instead, they use a third party tool such as DeltaView.
How do you get rid of the metadata?  Well, if the other attorney did not want 
you to see the changes, you may have gained an advantage in the negotiations.  
I will not comment on the ethics of using that advantage.  I think the stand-up 
proper thing to do is to notify the attorney and warn her that she may want to 
use a so-called metadata scrubber.
If you want to scrub the metadata yourself, some good scrubbers are free on the 
internet.  Just go to Google and search for metadata scrubber.
That will give you a clean document that WordPerfect, in the conversion, will 
not convert into what is, in effect, a legal blackline.
Inadvertently disclosing internal strategic discussions through metadata could 
be a breach of the attorney/client privilege.  That's why our standard desktop 
prompts the user (before saving or printing) that the document contains track 
changes and why we have a menu option (as an add-in) for scrubbing metadata.
What Chip says about working in Word is accurate.  Track changes can be a 
wonderful feature, particularly for documents being bounced back and forth 
where seeing changes is desirable (though we still prefer a document comparison 
tool, which Word itself offers as an option under the Tools menu).  In Word, 
use JAWS's verbosity to cycle through a number of levels of chatter as far as 
track changes are concerned.  You can even have JAWS jump to the next change in 
the document.  
Hope this helps.
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