MadCap Software Forums

I've had issues with this for awhile. Changing settings in the GUI such as Show Changes and disabling Track Changes does not turn off change tracking. Look at the HTML view and it's loaded with change codes. Then I still have to go back and Accept All. I know this must be a factor in why my system is so painfully slow using Flare (even with a Skylake i7 and 16 GB of RAM, which should be MORE than enough).

I want Change Tracking DISABLED so it does not do ANYTHING. The logic Flare has around this 'feature' is deeply flawed. When you 'turn off' Track Changes, it should be OFF. Period. Do I need to file a bug on this?

is there a Registry setting to put an end to this?

There was a question on this a couple of months ago, and the solution was not to just turn it off, but to go through the topics and accept (or reject) the changes, THEN turn off change tracking.

I wish that worked. Accepting all works, but then turning off Show Changes and then turning off Track Changes completely after that does not work. Changes still get tracked in text mode

That sounds very odd. Take a read of this help topic, and if you're certain you're doing what it says in here, then I think you'll need to talk to Tech Support.

http://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare201 ... hanges.htm

EDIT:
I've just gone into my project, turned on tracked changes to see what it did, and tried to turn it off again - WITH A MASSIVE FAIL!!!

I'm going to report it as a bug, please do the same (see my signature for a handy link).

ANOTHER EDIT: I managed to get it to stop tracking changes by turning it off (the button was dimmed), closing the topic, opening the topic again. If the button is STILL dimmed, click it again until it is the normal black font. Definitely a bit ropey, but it did eventually stop tracking changes.

That is definitely still a bug. I think that's worth reporting. If we both do it they might pay attention.

This is a problem that was solved by others a long time ago. Can't believe this is an issue.

Logged it. Wow, even that is painfully slow. Good ol' ASP .NET. #NOTIMPRESSED

I just want to jump in here. I recently accidentally hit the hotkey for tracking changes. I didn't realize it was doing it until I'd made hundreds of changes on a topic and went to review the code. I saw the message in the Text Editor that you shouldn't remove change tracking, so I didn't. Days later, when I went to build, a huge chunk of my topic which I'd cut out completely (on purpose) was still appearing. When I looked at the XML Editor the content was gone, but in the XML Editor it was covered with change code tracking. I messed with all kinds of things and eventually just backed up the file and then cut the whole section out of the Text Editor.

Later, my beta readers found 4 other spots where something similar had happened on a much smaller scale. Something the tracking did really messed with my topics.

@sds, what you're seeing is the normal effect of tracking changes. Tracked changes are preliminary - they must be accepted before they will actually be implemented. So if you do not accept the changes, none of them (including deleted paragraphs, etc) will appear in the output.

You can accept all changes in a topic from the Review ribbon, by clicking the arrow under Accept Change. You should be able to 'fix' your topics by accepting all of the changes you have made since Track Changes was activated (then turn it off unless you need it!)

The notice in the text editor means that you shouldn't try to edit comments and tracked changes in the Text Editor. They are represented in a non-human-readable way, so messing with them is a bad idea. However, you can make changes/comments, edit and accept in the XML editor without any issues.

@sds - I have also accidentally hit the Track Changes hotkey in the past and ran into similar issues with changes not appearing in the output. Then I later realized what happened, accepted all changes, and resaved/committed the changes. It was very aggravating.

@techwriter31 - I don't know why I didn't receive these replies. I thought I had the notification turned on. Knowing that I have to actually accept the changes is really helpful just in case I hit the hotkey again. Personally I wish that something that major was not a hotkey. I went for days making changes before I realized it.