What does the term redlining a document?

Answer 1

Redlining a document means comparing two versions of one document for changes. For example, in Version One, the first sentence might be "I took my dog for a walk." In Version Two, that sentence might have changed to, "I took my cat for a walk." The word "redlining" comes from the pre 90s era when law firms used to have staff sit with a red pen to circle the changes between versions or documents to save the attorneys time in reviewing and comprehending the numerous changes. With the advent of computer software, a redlining program (also known as document comparison program ) can catch that change and show it to you in a redline document where, in the example above, the word "dog" would be deleted and the word "cat" would be added. Documents continue to get more and more complex. Word 97 documents were mainly text. Now, one can have embedded objects inside Word documents or deal with many formats in the business setting. Most software today can redline Word documents in so much as comparing words, paragraphs and tables in documents. Very few programs can handle EXCEL, PDF, PowerPoint formats and even less can handle Excel and Visio objects and images like JPGs, BMPs, and TIFFs that are inserted into Word documents. There's a number of programs out there that can help you with some or all of your needs . It really matters on what those needs are. If you just need a simple comparison of just the words and phrases, Microsoft's built-in document comparison tools will work just fine. If you're looking for a program that can compare everything in your document (including those tricky Excel and Visio objects and images), you might want to look at programs like Change-Pro that can catch those changes and "redline" them too.