Last week I talked about effective naming strategies as the first step to an editing with Microsoft Word 2007 workflow. This week, I'd like to move to the next most import aspect: Version Control.
Clear naming and separate folders may not be enough to guarantee that you don't have version control problems. Version control problems occur when two different people make changes to two different copies of a file at the same time. For example, you may have Smith Revised stored in the shared network drive. A colleague might make a copy of the file and take it home on a laptop computer to make changes. Meanwhile, you may open the Smith Revised file and make some changes of your own. Now there are two copies of the same file, with the same name, with different changes in them.
Word does have the Compare tool to allow combining the changes, but the additional work and possible confusion are worth avoiding if you can.
Methods for ensuring version control range from simple communication ("Hey, everybody, I'm taking the Smith file home-don't work on it anymore until I bring it back!") to sophisticated document management systems. Document management systems are preprogrammed databases that allow you to "check out" a document while you are working on it so that no one else can make changes. Some examples of document management systems are Microsoft's SharePoint, Xerox's Docushare, and EMC Corporation's Documentum.
But short of purchasing software or signing on to one of these services, you could consider using a simple renaming system to indicate files that are in use by someone else. Have everyone who might work on a file agree that before copying it to a laptop or elsewhere you rename it with the letter x in front of the name, like this: xSmith Revised. The x indicates to everyone not to work on that file. When the person who checked out the file copies it back to the shared drive, he or she renames it again to remove the x.
As long as the document remains on a shared network drive, Word will automatically prevent two people from working on it at the same time. If you try to open a document that is already being used by someone, you receive a message that the file is in use. You then have the choice of working on it anyway and having Word Merge the changes when the document becomes available or looking at a read-only copy. It is also possible to open a read-only copy and resave the file with a different name in order to make changes, but if you did that, you would be deliberately causing version control problems. So of course you wouldn't do that.
Join Jennie in our online classes (she'll be teaching two upcoming classes for IconLogic): Writing Training Documents and eLearning Scripts and Editing with Microsoft Word 2007.