Affinity Publisher: Regression in support for Word text revision modes

[Pyanepsion]

There has been a major regression in support for Word text revision modes from 2.0. When attempting to paste Word texts that have undergone revisions, deleted elements are no longer recognised and pasted as they were in previous versions of Affinity Publisher. This behaviour obviously hinders the effective presentation of our work, particularly when it is essential to show the changes that have been made.

 

Steps to reproduce :

• Open a Word document containing added text, deleted text, and moved text (revision mode on).
• Copy the text from the Word document.
• Open Affinity Publisher v2.2.1.2075 and attempt to paste the copied text.

Expected result:
The revision mode changes (added, deleted and moved text) should be correctly pasted and visible in Affinity Publisher.

Result achieved:
Word text deleted in revision mode is not pasted into Affinity Publisher, unlike previous versions of the software.

Attachments :

• Test Word document containing added text, deleted text and moved text.

 

word.docx

[Old Bruce]

Note: I do not have MicroSoft's Word, I rely on LibreOffice and Pages to open Word files.

Here is what I see when I open the Word file.

Pages:

=============================================

LibreOffice:

[Pyanepsion]

The Affinity Publisher bug seen in Word also affects texts from LibreOffice and OpenOffice. These two free software packages also offer a revision mode, albeit somewhat limited, which allows you to track changes made to a text. This feature is essential for communication.
When you copy a text from LibreOffice or OpenOffice into Affinity Publisher, the revision mode doesn’t work properly either. Any ‘deletions’ or ‘origin of movement’ made to the text are lost, making the functionality completely useless. This problem did not previously exist in Affinity Publisher version 2.0.

[MikeTO]

I agree that the example doesn't work, Publisher doesn't appear to handle "Moved To" (green double underline changes). It handled Insertions, Deletions, Formatting, and Moved From, but lost the Moved To.

So is this definitely new or did previous documents not have Moved To revisions? I ask because while I don't have 2.0.4 for comparison, 1.10.6 doesn't handle "Moved To" revisions either.

In the meantime, can't you just accept tracked changes before importing into Publisher?

[Pyanepsion]

Hello, @MikeTO,

I’d like to thank you for your pertinent comments. You have indeed raised an important point, that of understanding the importance of revision mode, particularly among those who are unfamiliar with its usefulness.

Word’s revision mode is not just about identifying changes for an individual user. It is first and foremost an invaluable collaboration tool, allowing multiple people to contribute to a document, make changes and clearly track who has done what. The ‘Deleted’ and ‘Moved to’ tags are particularly useful for understanding the logic and context behind each modification.

Validating changes before importing them into Affinity Publisher would defeat the purpose of this tool. It would eliminate the entire revision history, depriving collaborators of the ability to track and understand the evolution of the document. That’s the whole point of revision mode: to provide a detailed record of changes.

I carried out a more detailed test today, using a new text containing all the character and background colours available in normal text mode. In revision mode, as before, I used a Word script to automatically colour the backgrounds for the ‘Added’, ‘Deleted’, ‘Move origin’ and ‘Move destination’ tags.

Importing the Word file into Affinity Publisher remains curiously impossible today, but the result is much more satisfactory. All text, including that which has been deleted or moved, is preserved, and above all, all background colours, even for text in revision mode, are correctly applied.

word.docx

[EmT]

Hi @Pyanepsion

I am not seeing any difference in behaviour in 1.10.6, 2.0.4, 2.2.1 or 2.3.0. We also found that on Word itself the same behaviour is shown when pasting between documents. 

Could you provide a video of what you are doing and the results you can see in 2.0.4 and the latest beta please.