eXtyles creates a baseline copy (a backup snapshot) of your document at several points during processing, including at Activation and before running Auto-Redact. You can also create a new baseline copy at any point using Create New Baseline!

Applies to all eXtyles products:

On this page:

Compare to Baseline

To compare the current version of the document being processed by eXtyles with one of the baseline copies:

1. Select eXtyles > Compare to Baseline.
   In the dialog that appears, the most recent version is highlighted at the top of the list. Date and time appear next to each document, e.g., Document$base.doc (2/15/12 1:43 PM). You can select any baseline versions to compare with your current document.

2. Select the version you want and click Compare.

3. Review the Baseline Compare document to see what changes eXtyles has made since the baseline version you chose was saved.

Word-level comparison versus character-level comparison

If several baseline are files available, you’ll have the option to show changes at the word level or at the character level. If you choose the word level, Word will show any change within a word as a word replacement:

A knight in shining armour armor came to tea.

If you choose the character level, Word will show changes to individual characters:

A knight in shining armour came to tea.

If only one baseline file is available when you select Compare to Baseline, eXtyles defaults to showing changes at the word level.

Formatting changes

You can also use Compare to Baseline to see all formatting changes made to your document, including changes to

• fonts

• paragraph spacing

• face markup (bold, italic, etc.)

To see formatting changes in your Baseline Compare document, check the Show formatting changes box before clicking Compare on the Compare to Baseline dialog.

Source document display options

You can also change the display of source documents (the documents that are to be compared, such as a working document and a baseline document) in Word by viewing the Review ribbon in Word and clicking Compare toward the right of the ribbon; from the Compare drop-down menu, you can choose Show Source Documents and one of the following settings: Hide Source Documents, Show Original, Show Revised, or Show Both. The default setting in eXtyles Compare to Baseline is Hide Source Documents, which means that by default, you see only the comparison result between the original document and the baseline.

Baseline Compare issues

Special characters

The Compare to Baseline file will show certain special characters as deleted and reinserted, including the degree symbol (°), multiplication sign (×), similar (≅), less than and greater than (<, >), plus or minus (∓), even when there is no actual change to the font or font size.

Greek letters

Compare to Baseline shows Greek letters (and other characters) as changed if eXtyles has used the Symbol font to represent them.

Automatic numbering

Baseline Compare may show the following “changes” in auto-numbered text (e.g., lists, headings)

• Numbering may be reformatted

• Numbers may be shown as deleted and reinserted

• Indention and tab widths may be altered

Special cases

Fields

If some text in the original document is represented in a field, eXtyles Cleanup converts the field to text. Baseline Compare shows shading to indicate that the original text was in a field.

Footnotes

Compare to Baseline highlights differences when a footnote citation has been re-represented. In Baseline Compare, both sets of numbers will appear in dotted boxes.

For now, it is necessary to copy the footnote text from original document to working copy by hand.

Private fields

eXtyles removes private fields and leaves the notation [REMOVED PRIVATE FIELD] in their place.

Advance fields

eXtyles removes advance fields and leaves the notation [REMOVED ADVANCE FIELD] in their place.

Added paragraph marks

eXtyles may insert a paragraph mark (“hard return”) before a page break, after a removed table notation, or at the end of a document.