A couple days ago I received the following e-mail:
Hi Josh,
Thanks for a great blog.
Just wanted to highlight one feature that, unless I am mistaken, no iPhone/iPad app offers: track changes in word processors. Being an M&A/contracts lawyer, a track change option is an absolute need for me if I want to use the iPad for work.
Have you heard that track changes would be coming to any of the apps?
Greetings from Belgium.
Christophe
I am also a business/M&A lawyer and I deal with document comparisons extensively. Unfortunately, I think our friend Christophe from Belgium is correct. I am aware of no tool that correctly handles track changes from Microsoft Word or that can generate markups while typing or from between two documents. Some observations and a bumpy workaround.
In Pages on the iPad, tracked changes are simply accepted upon opening. Opening a document with tracked changes in a file viewer like GoodReader (iTunes link) has a similar result as does opening a document with tracked changes in QuickOffice (iTunes link) or Documents To Go (iTunes link). Of course, marks are viewable as pdf but not editable.
Select Versions to Compare
A person can create a markup using the iPad through Google Docs. Doing so is not an easy task. First you must create a new Google Doc as your “original.” From there, you either edit or paste replacement text as your “revised” version. Google Docs saves all your changes as separate versions. At any time you can select any two versions to generate a markup. Google Docs seems to work fine on the iPad.
So, you can’t see your markups as you edit, but you can generate a markup. Google Docs gives you something like this:
Google Docs Markup
Interestingly, this has not been a problem in my particular work flow with the iPad. So far, much of my writing on the iPad has either been “rough draft” of letters or contract provisions. In the couple times where I have been editing with the need to generate a markup, I’ve been making my edits in a new version and doing the comparison at my desktop (I personally don’t like to see the markups as I type, but I know some people do). Pages for the iPad chokes on things like auto numbering and formatting which many structured contracts employ. So for that reason, I haven’t found the iPad a good tool for editing documents with that type of formatting. Google Docs also struggles with some of the same formatting stuff imported from Word.
I fully expect an app to come along with this functionality.
I’ll keep you posted if I see something addressing this need.
I also have searched for but not found a single application for the iphone or ipad that can display tracked changes. I think this is a crazy omission — and I am amazed no one has tried to figure it out yet. Note that Pages also deletes all footnotes when it imports documents, which is also insane.
A dedicated app would be unnecessary if some entrepreneur would address this golden market opportunity: Create a Web-based service that lets you upload two docs and generate a redline (“RedlineIt.com”). There are lots of online translators and photo editors; why not an online redlining utility?
This seems like a trivial challenge for software engineers who know what they’re doing. Freemium business model: Make basic redlining free (with ads); add a small fee to enable a huge range of customization options, preferences you can store, maybe interoperability with Google Docs, Evernote, Dropbox.etc. — as well as comparing PDFs, Excel, PowerPoint and other types of files. Make it easy to use from either a full Web browser (like Safari on the iPad) or a mobile browser on iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, etc.
Any takers?
I’d subscribe to that service!
I actually thought I saw something on TechCrunch 6-9 months ago suggesting just this service. But, when I went back to find the article I “remembered,” no such luck. If that company is out there, they are under my radar
The service would need to handle offline comparison as well. Ipad is a travelling tool for me and flights are document review sessions for me. In addition, the app would have to be able to handle received markup docs.
Microsoft should be all over this to generate income as it is only an extension of their office product.
Haven’t we been waiting for a solution for too long now?