Coloured comments in a word processor [Word/Libre/OpenOffice] - is it possible?
Is there a way to have comments in different colours, in Microsoft Word, Open Office Writer, or Libre Office? (I am currently using Open Office, and I'm happy with it, but I am open to making the switch if need be.) If that would require installing some additional widget, but won't cause the file (including the comments) to be unreadable without it, I'm open to that too.
I am using comments extensively while writing. Every time I re-read what I wrote to get back into the stream, if I find something that needs editing, I leave a comment for later. If I write something, and need something to foreshadow it earlier, I leave a comment. If I need to reference something in a conversation, but I don't know yet where this reference leads (so it's a thread I leave lose to pick up later), I leave a comment. It would be very helpful to me if I could colour-code those comments in some way, so "bad wording, needs rephrasing" comments would be visually different from "this plot thread needs work" comments.
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A useful option may also be GoogleDocs, as it's free. I can't give specific examples (Gmail/Gdocs blocked at my current day-job), but I remember some students used it for peer-critique very well. It defaults to each person having a different color for their edits/comments.
Since it sounds like you're self-commenting, the multi-color thing may not work, but I wanted to offer a free option.
MS Word allows LOTS of fun with styles -- that's what I'm focused on right now. You can even filter your comments and search for specific things, if you want to explore macros.
In my current "April Draft" template, I have some styles called "draft body", "draft talking to myself" "draft navigating" and "draft H#" (using 1-3, for table of contents.) When I show it to my boss, I'll switch to department template, and anything still in "thinking to myself" formatting will indicate a question I still need to address before I declare the draft finalized.
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Added due to comments: I use LibreOffice Writer. My comments below reference it, not OpenOffice Writer. I believe these were derived from the same original code, but apparently they have diverged since then, at least in regard to handling formatting of comments. Switching to LibreOffice Writer has apparently resolved Galastel's problem.
In LibreOffice Writer:
I notice that if you highlight the text of the comment in the box, then the regular Format/Character menu will let you pick different colors for the TEXT, so that would let you choose different colors for different categories of comment.
The documentation says the comment box background color changes for different users. So one way would be to change your user id for each comment; that is possible but seems tedious.
I notice in the Tools/Options menu there are several fields related to Comments, by default the BG color changes by the user commenting. I tried to change mine to White, thinking that would be best if I was just changing the text color, it didn't work. I tried a few things for five minutes but gave up. Perhaps there is a way to assign "white" as the background color for YOUR user id, I did not look up how to do that.
I should think changing the text color would be enough for a handful of categories. Red, Blue, Black, etc. Only problem is you can't search for comments of a certain text color, other than visually, then it seems like a pain to scroll through 300 pages looking for a red comment.
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