Who is this article for?

Users who want to learn more about content control compatibility

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This page documents known compatibility and issues specifically around editing Word documents including content controls with nested controls or other field types inside them.

1. Updates and challenges

1. Version 7.2.3 Updates:
   • Introduced editing of nested content controls (content controls inside other content controls).
   • Enabled editing of paragraph text next to complex fields within content controls.
   • These changes were based on industry-standard templates observed at the time.
2. Limitations:
   • Editing text next to simple fields was not implemented, as it wasn't identified as a requirement pre-release.
3. Challenges with Office Versions:
   • Different Office versions process Word documents differently.
   • Some versions convert complex field codes (w:fldChar) to simple field codes (w:fldSimple).
   • Please Review doesn't currently support simple field codes, leading to issues:
     1. Affected areas appear grey instead of blue in reviews.
     2. Editing text near these fields can break document downloads.
     3. May require support team intervention.
4. Impact:
   • PR's document preparation process is affected by these Office version differences.
   • Users may encounter unexpected behavior when working with documents processed by incompatible Office versions.

2. What is a simple field code?

In Microsoft Word, a Simple Field is a type of field code used to insert dynamic content or automated elements into a document. In the context of content control, Simple Fields can be used to inside content control. Our Development team are considering supporting these inside content controls in the future.

3. Breakdown

This table breaks down what has been explained above:

4. Behaving office versions theory

Our Development team initially provided the following table from their testing of versions of Office that allow paragraphs with complex field codes to be edited correctly since v7.2.3 of PR. This is the Office version installed on the PR server, not on the end user machines. However, this has since been found to not be true in all cases so changing Office versions may not behave the same in all situations.

Note: As this impacts the preparation stage of the review, this will not fix existing reviews but only new reviews of documents.

5. Possible workarounds before review

These techniques have been found to work in limited tests performed but they are inconclusive as it really depends on how the various Word versions involve behave. These process may help ensure that complex field codes are processed correctly on the server and not converted to simple field codes. However, please note:

• These have been successful in specific cases.
• These hasn't been extensively tested with various documents or Office versions.
• Consider trying one of these method before uploading documents to PR if you encounter issues.

5.1 Resave the document on your local computer

1. Open the document in a behaving version of Office 365 on a desktop.
2. Re-save the document with a new name. (You may need to make a minor change to ensure reprocessing.)
3. Upload this newly saved document to PR, even if the server is using a misbehaving Office version.

5.2 Entire document as Zone for editing in Word before review

1. 1. Set the owner of the review to be an Author-Contributor - or set another user to at least be a role with Contributor in the name.
2. As that user, open the review and in the Zone editing view, mark the first paragraph and last paragraph as one entire zone.
3. Download the zone and open it in Word on your computer.
4. Make a minor change such as adding a space somewhere that it doesn't matter.
5. Re-save the document
6. Go back to Please Review and upload that zone back.

6. Workaround for download with comments to work, post review

The following PleaseReport query can be used to identify all the paragraphs that are showing as using a simple field code, changing 123 to the review id in question:

let
Source = OData.Feed("https://url.for.your.PleaseReport/", null,
[Headers = [#"X-IdeagenDataAPIKey"= "AccesKey" ]]),
Please ReviewReporting_VT_Comment_table = Source{[Name="Please ReviewReporting_VT_Comment", Signature="table"]}[Data],
FilteredRows = Table.SelectRows(Please ReviewReporting_VT_Comment_table, each ([ReviewId] = 123)),
FilteredRows1 = Table.SelectRows(FilteredRows, each Text.Contains([OriginalText], "data-type=""8192""")),
SelectedColumns = Table.SelectColumns(FilteredRows1, {"ParagraphId", "DocumentId", "CommentType", "CommentNumber"}),
Please ReviewReporting_VT_Document_table = Source{[Name="Please ReviewReporting_VT_Document", Signature="table"]}[Data],
JoinedTables = Table.Join(SelectedColumns, "DocumentId", Please ReviewReporting_VT_Document_table, "ObjectId", JoinKind.Inner),
FinalTable = Table.SelectColumns(JoinedTables, {"Title", "ParagraphId", "CommentType", "CommentNumber"})
in
FinalTable

The following is the SQL query version of this if applying this directly on the Please Review database:

SELECT d.Title, c.ParagraphId FROM T_Document d JOIN T_Comment c ON d.ObjectId = c.DocumentId WHERE d.ReviewId = 123 AND c.OriginalText LIKE '%data-type="8192"%' AND c.CommentType = 'P';

This will list the document names and the paragraph ids where you will find changes made on paragraphs that include simple field codes.

If you then open the review and click on any paragraph in the review, the browser address bar will change to include paragraphid=00001234. If you edit the address so that the paragraph id matches the ones from the query result, the review will jump to that paragraph id. If the changes on that paragraph id are deleted and this is repeated for all those found. This will allow this to download just fine.

Is is important to point out that is not accepting or rejecting, this is a deletion, so this would need to be done by the original maker of the change. Also note that if anyone has replied or followed any of those comments/changes up, they would need to also delete theirs first to allow the original one to be deleted.

To reinstate the comments or changes you may find that making a user a contributor, marking the section as a zone for editing in Word, and downloading the section of the document as a zone and so that the user can editing the document in Word to make the same changes that way. This may or may not work depending on how Office behaves on the end user computer.

Otherwise, the comments/changes deleted, will have to be added back after the review in Word. Comments on their own should be ok, but comments with changes or replies to changes are what would need to be reinstated for this.

Note: These results may include ones that would work if included but to dig further requires the setup of a cloned review where trial and error is performed to identify which do work and which don't work.

7. Fix

This was initially fixed for new reviews, in v7.7.1 and that was tested with Office 2021.

The fix is tested with all Office versions, in v8.0.0 onwards, so upgrading to this version or higher, is now recommended to fix this. Again, this will only apply to new reviews created going forward.