Tip: How to Remove Change Bars Temporarily (Or Permanently)

Tip: How to Remove Change Bars Temporarily (Or Permanently)

"Can you give me a version of this document without the change bars?" asked the sales rep. "I want to show it to a customer."

"Sure," I said.

In FrameMaker v. 7.1, that's easy, I thought. Select Format --> Document --> Change Bars and the Change Bars Properties box comes up. Let's see: select Clear All Change Bars, and click Set. No more change bars.

Next day. "Can you give me a version of this document with change bars?" asked the engineer. "I want to review only the changed sections."

Hmmm. Not easily, because when FrameMaker removes change bars, they're gone forever: you can't get them back again, and there's no Undo. What I ended up doing was using a printed version of the document to show me where the changes were, then manually going to each changed place, and adding and deleting one space to make the change bars appear. Very tedious.

Now, I handle this differently. If anyone wants to see a document without change bars, I go to the same Change Bars Properties box, but do something entirely different: set the Color of the change bars to White. This means the change bars are actually still present, they just don't show up. (Naturally, you pick the appropriate color if you're using non-white backgrounds.)

By only changing the color of the change bars, you can hang onto them until you're absolutely, positively sure you want to remove them. That makes everybody happy, including the technical writer.

My aim on this blog is to provide tips for technical writers. These might include:

• How to get the most from standard tools like FrameMaker, Microsoft Word, and RoboHelp
• Useful tools you may not have heard of
• Helpful links to resources and information
• Articles on aspects of the writing life, from style to finding jobs

Any ideas? Let me know!

Thank you for reading.

Ed DeJesus