As you can tell Teresa, Track Changes can get quite confusing. Having studied
this feature over the past few months, I may have some insight for you.

#1 Version matters - It sounds like your organization is using Word 2003. Is
the 3rd party?

#2 Colors are random - When you use the "By Author" Track Change setting,
our testing has shown that the colors you see will not necessarily be the
same colors that another user sees. In other words, the colors chosen by Word
for the "By Author" setting are random. As you experienced, when you change
the Track Change setting to a specific color, everything changes to that
color (as you just told Word to change, for example comments, to be that
color).

#3 Beware of the Remove Personal Information setting - As Dawn pointed out,
this setting is under Tools | Options and while most of these settings are
application settings, this setting is a document setting. In other words, if
it is turned on for a document, it is not necessarily turned on for other
documents. Tricky little setting and worse, it is slightly flawed.

#4 Scrubbing software - Is anyone using any third party utility to remove
metadata?

#5 User information - Worth double checking if it is in fact different as in
our past project, we had conflicting feedback (and it definitely impacts how
Word tracks changes).

Hope this helps. If not, screen shots would be the next best step to
understand your situation. Take care and have a blessed day.

Regards, Giorgio DiPaolo, CtCS

************************************************** *****

"Teresa" wrote:

That's a great tip to know! Thanks....but...didn't solve the problem...We
are using v2003, but that box isn't checked on either of the 2 people who
don't get different colors. Well one gets different colors, and I do. But
when we send to the 3rd party he doesn't. It all changes to the same color
no matter what he choses (by color or by author). And the user names are
definitely different on each machine.

"Dawn Crosier, Word MVP" wrote:

The "By Author" mode of tracked changes uses the information in the User
Name field of your version of Word. In Word 2007 - Office button, Word
Options, Popular.
In earlier versions - Tools, Options, User Information (Name: field)

In 2002 and 2003 - there is a security setting on the Security tab ~
"Remove personal information from file properties on save" which will
change the tracked changes edits to all be made by "Author" which will
convert them all to the same color.

--
Dawn Crosier
Microsoft MVP
"Education Lasts a Lifetime"
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