Episode 11: Tracking Changes in LibreOffice

Post image of Episode 11: Tracking Changes in LibreOffice
GD Star Rating
loading...

Working on a document, and honing it to perfection can be a long process of writing, receiving feedback, making changes and then repeating the cycle.  When I first began using my computer to write, I would often create my first drafts with pen and paper, and then type it up on the computer.  As I became more proficient with the computer, and the pressure of a career made me understand that being able to write quickly is almost as important as being able to write eloquently, I changed my workflow to eliminate steps and streamline the process of writing a document.  I found that wiring a draft by hand and then typing it over again on the computer crated a lot of extra work.  Also, printing drafts to mark them up with changes that I would subsequently have to type up again in the computer, not only wasted paper, but also meant that I could have a dozen different copies laying on my desk and not be sure which would be the draft I was working on.  Luckily modern word processing tools offer the ability to create an all digital workflow and eliminate a lot of the extra steps that are so time consuming.

Instead of printing your drafts and marking them up with a red pen, LibreOffice allows you to implement an all electronic workflow, and save comments and edits as part of the document history.  In this tutorial you will learn how to use the tools that LibreOffice provides to track the changes you make to your documents, and provide your reviewers with the ability to reject or accept changes.  Even though this is a process that I find is often overlooked, it is extremely simple to implement, and can make you vastly more productive.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful, and as always, I welcome your feedback!

Episode 11: Tracking Changes in LibreOffice, 5.0 out of 5 based on 4 ratings

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Tony Pelaez   @   16 January 2012

Related Posts

Like this post? Share it!

RSS Digg Twitter StumbleUpon Delicious Technorati Facebook

12 Comments

  • sonic

    hi sir,may i know how to edit the table for mailmerge without create new spreadsheet.. or how to using datasource without using base..

  • Ar1sto15le

    This is great, exactly what I was looking for.

    Thank you.

  • Pingback: Track Changes | CHRISTINE GUEST DESIGNS

  • Alfred Conan Williams

    Thank you; this is a very useful video. I do have a couple of comments though:

    1. There’s a (pretty bad) typo; it should be “exciting” not “exiting” (the latter means “leaving”, of course). Also,

    2. Do we really need to “go ahead” each time before doing something? The words “go ahead” are unecessary, and make this otherwise very good tutorial rather irritating and, perhaps more importantly, less concise than it could be.

  • tnyplz

    Thanks for pointing out the typo. You are absolutely correct, it should be exciting not exiting.
    Also, I’m sorry you find the phrase “go ahead” irritating. These videos are recorded live and without a script.

  • Alfred Conan Williams

    No problem at all. In that case, perhaps a script would help with conciseness in future?

    I do hope you view my comments as constructive (which is how they are intended).

    In any case, thank you again for the tutorials; they are helpful and much appreciated.

  • Jan

    What software were you using to record that screencast? Thanks. Best regards.

    Jan

  • tnyplz

    I use ffmpeg compiled with X11-grab to record the screen, and then I also record the audio separately in Audacity. Sooner or later I hope to get a tutorial video up that shows my whole process, but I’m still tweaking it every video, so my process changes. I like ffmpeg because it offers the greatest flexibility in terms of choosing file formats, resolution, and framerate. ffmpeg is a command-line utility, if you are not comfortable using the terminal, I recommend Kazam, which has a nice gui front-end to ffmpeg.

    The ffmpeg command I use is:
    ffmpeg -an -f x11grab -r 24 -s 1920×1080 -i :0.0 -vcodec libx264 -qp 0 -preset ultrafast -threads 0 screen_captures/screen_`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`.mkv

  • Greg Wilson

    Instead of tracking changes, is there a way to diff and merge two copies of a document that have been edited separately and concurrently? We use version control to manage things, and being able to diff/merge Impress presentations would make our lives _much_ easier…

  • Drea1508

    I’m working on a .doc that has been sent to me but I’m using LibraOffice using tracked changes when I send it back will the changes I’ve made translate to Word if I save it as a .doc?

  • Tony Pelaez

    I don’t believe you can do that in Impress, but it is possible in LibreOffice Writer. If you are familiar with git or svn, and know a little about writing ruby code, you might want to check out Showoff, a library to create html slideshow presentations. You can then use git or svn pretty effectively IMO. https://github.com/schacon/showoff

  • Tony Pelaez

    I haven’t tried that in a while, but if I remember correctly most of my tracked changes did translate over. It may have been however that I was opening up a word document in LibreOffice instead of the other way around. It may be worth doing some tests first to be sure. I will try to find some time ASAP.

Previous Post
«
Next Post
»
Powered by Wordpress   |   Lunated designed by ZenVerse - Modified by Tony Pelaez