Documents now tracks formatting changes, compares two versions and builds tables as Word does

The word processor in Rutba Office changed its name in 1.29.0, from Rutba Word to Documents. The rename has its own post. This one is about what it can do now that it could not do a fortnight ago.

Track Changes that records what Word records

Recording tracked changes arrived in 1.27 on 26 September, with a warning attached: only typing and deleting were recorded. A paste, a find and replace, a sort, and Enter or Backspace across the end of a paragraph all happened unrecorded, which matters a great deal if the markup is what a contract is negotiated on.

1.29.4 closed that. Formatting changes made while tracking (bold, a font, a size, a colour, a style, alignment, spacing and indents) are kept as Word keeps them, shown in All Markup with who made them, and accepted or rejected one at a time or all at once. Replace All and Sort are recorded, and so are paragraph marks: Enter, Backspace and Delete across paragraphs, and each line of a paste. A paragraph mark added or removed is drawn as a ¶, underlined or struck through.

The same release fixed several ways a tracked document could go wrong, and they are worth saying plainly. Typing in a paragraph that held a formatting change Word had recorded wrote a file Word could not open, and so did accepting or rejecting a paragraph Word had added while tracking. Editing beside a tracked move could bring back the words that had been moved away. Each of those is fixed, and a paragraph holding a move is now left alone until the move is accepted or rejected.

Compare two versions

Review → Compare (1.29.3) takes the original, picked with Browse, and the document you have open as the revised one. It makes a new document, in a window of its own, with what changed marked as revisions: words taken out and put in within a paragraph, and paragraphs removed or added whole. From there the ordinary Accept and Reject buttons work through it.

View → Split shows one document in two panes, so the clause on page two can stay in view while you work on page nine. View → Side by Side lays this document beside the one before it.

Tables that do what Word’s do

1.29.6 gave tables the two tabs Word has. Table Design puts a table in one of Word’s built-in styles, from Table Grid to Grid Table 4 and List Table 4 in black or any of the six accents, written in the document’s theme colours. Style options turn the header row, total row, banded rows and columns, and first and last column on and off. Shading colours the selected cells, and Borders draws with a pen in Word’s line styles, weights and colours.

Table Layout puts rows and columns in and out, merges and splits cells, splits the table, sets widths, AutoFits and distributes columns, aligns the words in a cell and turns them to read down or up, repeats header rows on every page, sorts, and converts a table to text and back. Table Properties sets the table’s width, alignment and alt text, the row’s height, and whether a row may break across pages.

• Draw Table and the Eraser. The pen draws a new table on the page, or a line through a cell to split it. The eraser joins the two cells either side of the line you click.
• Formulas in cells: =SUM(ABOVE), =AVERAGE(LEFT), or cells as Word names them, such as =B2*C2, in a number format you choose. Update all formulas works them out again.
• Drawn as Word draws them, on screen, on paper and in a PDF: their own lines and shading, their style’s header row and bands, a merged cell as one cell, and the header rows again at the top of every page the table runs onto.
• Check Accessibility now reads a cell’s words against the cell’s own shading rather than the page, and offers to unmerge merged cells in one click.

Reading, and finding the right word

• Immersive Reader (1.29.2) turns the pages into a column for reading, with column width, a sepia or inverse page, Line Focus on one, three or five lines, text spacing, syllables and Read Aloud. Nothing of it is written to the file.
• Review → Thesaurus (1.29.8, Shift+F7) offers words of like meaning for the word at the caret, grouped by sense, and puts your choice in with its capitals kept.
• Review → Language (1.29.1) marks words as a language, or as not to be checked, the way Word keeps it, so Word proofs them in their own language.
• View → Gridlines lays a quarter-inch grid over the page for lining drawings up by eye. It never prints.

For long and formal documents

• Building blocks (1.29.4). Insert → Quick Parts saves the selection to the Quick Part or AutoText gallery under a name and puts it in again with a click, in any document, a heading still a heading.
• Mark Citation and a Table of Authorities (1.29.3), the index of cases and statutes a legal brief carries, with Update Table beside it.
• Insert → Signature Line writes the suggested signer’s name, title and e-mail and the sign date, as Word writes them.
• Design → Themes, Colours, Fonts and Effects (1.29.2) rewrite the document’s theme, and headings coloured from the theme take the new colours. Set as Default makes new blank documents start in this one’s theme and styles.
• Mail merge rules Ask, Fill-in and Set Bookmark (1.29.9), each with Word’s own dialog. Since 1.29.10 the merge also keeps Edit Recipient List’s ticks and sort, so the same people are left out when the letter is opened again.
• Insert → Object embeds a document, workbook or presentation, which a double-click opens in its own app. What opens is a copy, so changes made there do not go back into the document.
• Insert → 3D Models (1.29.9) puts a glTF model at the caret as a picture you can turn to any of ten views.

And a small one that people noticed: Ctrl+L, Ctrl+E, Ctrl+R and Ctrl+J align a paragraph left, centre, right and justified, as the buttons’ tooltips always said they would. Right-to-left paragraphs, tables and sections arrived in the same releases and have a post of their own.