Publisher: "track changes" function for text?

[KK_D]

In Indesign, there is a track changes function which tracks edits made to text, so that another user can review any changes and accept/reject them. Is there anything like this in Publisher? Thanks.

[GarryP]

The only thing I can think of is the Snapshot functionality but I think that would be way to 'clunky' and non-specific to use for that sort of thing as it's not designed to be used for that, and it’s not part of Publisher so you would have to open the document in Designer or Photo to use it anyway.

The Affinity applications were not designed with this sort of collaboration in mind (nothing that I’ve seen at least).

[Obscured]

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[carl123]

2 hours ago, KK_D said:

Is there anything like this in Publisher? Thanks.

No, not at the moment

[GarryP]

I’d forgotten that we can save the History but I’d agree that it’s not the right thing for what the OP wants either.

I would suggest sharing a text document in something like LibreOffice Writer, which has this sort of functionality, and then placing the text into Publisher only when it’s approved/ready (or when you just want to check that it’s looking okay so far and can be overwritten with a later version). Note that there might be issues with formatting when doing this so I would recommend doing the formatting after the final version has been placed if possible.

[Obscured]

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[thomaso]

Another workaround is more cumbersome but also quite common: Make the text corrections as comments in an exported PDF (that offers the desired "comment" option) and manually transfer the desired text changes to the Affinity document.

Advantage: • Layout/text styles are displayed when commenting / • multiple users may add comments
Disadvantage: • Changes must be transferred manually | • risk of mis-transferred content

[PaoloT]

30 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Advantage

Another advantage is that the corrections are not the typical mess resulting from automatic tracking changes. One only enters the relevant changes, and nothing else.

Paolo

 

[PaoloT]

3 hours ago, Circulus said:

One could also create a manual approach by duplicating the text>redact it and use the states panel to show the different revisions.

Can you elaborate on this idea? I can't figure how to get a difference document from this procedure.

 

[Obscured]

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[PaoloT]

On 1/19/2025 at 6:21 PM, Circulus said:

You either use a simple invisible layer that holds the comments per page and make it visible for the co worker to read and show/hide again.

Or make the changes/revisions on a duplicate of the original text or textstyle or whatever and show/hide this per page.

Thank you. Unfortunately, I see these solutions as either different from detailed change tracking, or too complicate to manage.

- The first solution is great for comments/corrections. It s, to be true, what I usually do in InDesign, with a Comments layer that can be only shown when sending a PDF to the collaborators. States in Publisher are a great step forward. However, it doesn't replace change tracking.

- Adding subsequent versions in different layers is both complicate (I can't see it even feasible on long documents), and requiring a very careful advanced planning and subsequent maintenance. Unless the overlapping layers match very closely, they are not even very much conductive to discover the differences.

Mind you: I find manually inserted comments/corrections as the best solution for revisions, since they are clear and focusing on the most importante changes. Sometimes, however, you need to see every detail, maybe to catch that minuscule change that may mean a disaster (like, for example, the type of a battery or a voltage value).

Paolo