Change-Pro - Apr/May '04

Change-Pro

Workshare DeltaView, the leading redlining program for Microsoft Word, has a new competitor: Change-Pro from Litéra Corp. While not quite as robust or fast as DeltaView, Change-Pro provides more features and retains more formatting in redlined versions than does SoftInterface Inc.’s DiffDoc (see August/September 2003 Law Office Computing). Change-Pro also is less expensive than DeltaView; Litéra offers to beat DeltaView’s license fees by 25 percent for an initial license.

As in all redlining programs, to use Change-Pro you select the original and revised files for comparison. Change-Pro loads both files, runs the comparison, and then displays the original, revised and redlined files on-screen. You can turn off the original and revised file displays if you wish, or switch between windows.

Change-Pro includes standard options for inserted, moved-from, moved-to and deleted text, as well as options for displaying changes to the structure of tables. You can elect to show or not show insertions, deletions or moves, as well as set the foreground and background colors. The formatting options include bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, double-underline or combinations thereof. You can set colors for inserted, deleted, moved, merged and padded cells in tables. However, there is no option to substitute a character, such as a caret, for deletions as there is in some other redline programs.

I used Change-Pro to compare several simple and several complex documents. Change-Pro appears to be as accurate in displaying changes as DeltaView and other redlining programs. However, a few larger documents were truncated and would not load. When I contacted the company, Litéra speculated that previously comparing the documents with DeltaView might have caused the problem because DeltaView, I was told, inserts codes into Word documents. I find this hard to believe because DeltaView doesn’t work with the original Word documents. Instead, it converts them temporarily to Rich Text Format, so it’s unlikely codes are inserted into the original files, but I guess it’s possible. Also, Change-Pro didn’t flag any changes to the structure of my tables. However, it did redline the inserted and deleted text properly.

Two Change-Pro features not available in DeltaView are the ability to accept or reject changes and the ability to remove metadata in the redlined version. A table appears in the main Change-Pro window that displays each change, allowing you to accept or reject it. When you save a redline comparison, Change-Pro deletes user-selected metadata, such as built-in properties, hidden text and field codes.

Litéra also includes a neat utility to convert Word files to Portable Document Format. This works on any Word file, not just those used for comparisons in Change-Pro. However, when I ran it on one file with a Table of Contents, the conversion utility changed the parameters for the Table of Contents to include Heading Styles 1, 2 and 3 instead of just Heading Style 1 as originally configured in the file. This increased the size of the Table of Contents and included some body text, not just headings.

Litéra looked into this anomaly and found user settings could be adjusted to resolve it.

I did encounter one other problem. On my office computer, where I use Windows 2000 and Office 2000, the Change-Pro floating toolbar in Word refused to stay put when I tried to dock it elsewhere. Every time I restarted Word, there it would be again, floating over the text of my document. After running a comparison, a related but somewhat more annoying problem occurred. The locations of my other toolbars in Word would be scrambled, forcing me to reset their locations. Neither of these problems occurred on my home computer where I use Windows XP and Office XP.

Despite the problems I encountered, Change-Pro is a serious competitor to DeltaView. It’s accurate and works like a redlining program should. It generates a redlined document that retains the original formatting. It also has the added benefit of letting you accept or reject changes to your document, remove metadata and create PDFs of your Word documents. With the addition of a few more features, such as the ability to substitute characters for deletions, it will become even better.

Litéra offers three pricing options. DeltaView users can upgrade at a 25 percent discount to DeltaView prices; initial licenses can be purchased starting at $300 for a single user, with an annual maintenance contract of 20 percent each year after the first year; or an annual license can be purchased starting at $150 for a single user. A demo version is available at www.litera.com if you want to try it before buying.

Litéra Corp.
(336) 375-2991, Ext. 818

http://www.litera.com/

Price: $60 to $150, depending on the number of annual individual licenses purchased. Contact the company for discounts and special pricing.

Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003

Reviewed by Richard C. Belthoff Jr., vice president & assistant general counsel at Wachovia Corp. He can be reached via e-mail at richard.belthoff@
wachovia.com.

Apr/May '04 Issue

PROS
Accurate comparison of two Word files.

CONS
Not able to compare some Word files.

VERDICT
Recommended if you can’t afford DeltaView. Change-Pro provides most of the same features as DeltaView, is an accurate redlining program and is only somewhat slower than DeltaView. It also has three additional features: the ability to accept or reject changes, remove metadata and create PDF files from Word documents. However, DeltaView still has it beat for speed, accuracy and additional redlining features.