Comparing InCopy article versions inline in Content Station 9

Info: This feature requires Content Station version 9.6 or higher and Enterprise Server 9.6 or higher.

Comparing different versions of an InCopy article inline is one of various ways of comparing articles in Content Station.

With this method, a version of an article is opened and compared with another version of that same article. Any differences that are found are displayed in the opened article in a way that is similar to Adobe Track Changes .

Figure: Comparing a version of an article inline with another version of that same article.

Which differences are detected?

Differences in the following areas are detected:

• The textual content of each article component (down to character level)

Differences in the following areas are not detected:

• Tables
• Applied styles
• Bulleted lists
• Numbered lists
• Hyperlinks
• Inline images
• Notes
• The presence of each article component

Using Inline Article Compare versus using Adobe Track Changes

The Inline Article Compare feature looks very similar to using Adobe Track Changes but contains some major differences and is more limited in use.

Inline Article Compare

• The content of the latest version of an article is checked against the content of another version of that same article.
• When an article is opened, any existing Track Changes are accepted.
• When an article is closed, any made changes are "accepted": no Track Changes information is stored. As a result, the structure of the article is kept simple and the file size low.
• While editing the article, differences or newly made changes cannot be "accepted" or "rejected" as can be done when using Adobe Track Changes.
• The Inline Article Compare feature is currently only available in Content Station, not in Smart Connection for InDesign or InCopy. This means that finding differences between different versions of an article that has been used in the Inline Article Compare can only be done in Content Station.

Adobe Track Changes

• The changes are stored within the structure of the article. This makes all changes and information about these changes readily available when editing the article in other applications such as InDesign or InCopy, but this also increases the size and complexity of the file.
• While editing the article, differences or newly made changes can be "accepted" or "rejected".

Comparing article versions

Step 1. Open an InCopy article.

Step 2. In the toolbar, click the Compare button.

A window appears showing all versions of the article.

Step 3. Choose the version that you want to compare the opened version with and click OK.

Both versions of the article are compared and any differences are displayed.

The Compare button in the toolbar now shows the version of the article that the opened version is compared with:

From here on, do any of the following:

• Edit the article. Any changes that you make are shown as Differences.

Note: The color that is used is a system-defined color and cannot be changed.

• To hide the Differences click the Compare button; to show the hidden Differences, click the button again.
• To navigate to the next or previous Difference, use the options in the Difference menu: 
• Difference > Next Difference
• Difference > Previous Difference

• To compare the article with another version, click the arrow in the Compare button to open the list of available versions and choose the version as before. During this process, any differences or changes are "accepted" and the differences between the 2 versions are shown.