This article outlines how to use the Change List and Changes Report when running 'Redline (.pdf)' comparisons in Draftable. These features were previously available in Side by Side comparisons and have been added to Redline (.pdf) comparisons from Draftable Legal v2.15.200 onward. This feature is not yet supported for Bulk Compare mode. Support for Change Lists in Bulk Compare will be added in future updates.
What is the Change List?
The Change List is an interactive list of changes found in your comparison. By default, it is shown in the Draftable PDF viewer on the right hand side of your window in the same location as the 'next actions' menu.
The Change List provides several functions to make it easier to review your comparison prior to sharing it with others or continuing drafting in MS Word. These include:
- Navigating sequentially through changes, with the relevant section of the redline being shown on screen and highlighted
- Tagging the status of changes
- Filtering changes shown by change type (e.g. insertion / deletion), content type (e.g. numbering, table, table of contents, comments) status tag or with / without notes
- Exporting the changes (including tags and notes) into a Changes Report to share with others
How to view the Change List
- Open the New Comparison Window, load your input files and run a comparison using the Redline (.pdf) Comparison Type
- Once you have run your compare, your Redline PDF will open in the Draftable viewer. The Change List will load on the right hand side of the screen by default.
- If you prefer to see the changes on the left hand side of the viewer, you can swap to this side by clicking the icon in the bottom right corner of the screen (pictured)
You can minimize the Change List by clicking on the Change List icon (pictured) in the top right corner of the Change List
Navigating through the changes
- You can easily review your changes by scrolling the change list, and can review them in your redline PDF by clicking on the individual Change Card in the Change List. This will scroll to the change and highlight it with a blue box around the relevant text.
- You can also navigate changes by using the 'next' and 'previous' change commands in the ribbon menu. This will scroll to the change and highlight it with a blue box around the relevant text.
Filtering the change list
- You can filter which changes are listed by using the filter menu at the top of the change list.
- When filtering, you can choose to select what is shown or to select what should not be shown
- When selecting what is or is not shown, you have several options.
You can filter changes based on the type of Change Type (i.e. insertions, deletions, moved text, etc)
You can filter changes based on the type of Content Type (i.e. Text, Table of Contents, Image, etc)
You can filter changes based on the Change Location (i.e. Main Document, Headers, Footers, etc)
You can filter changes based on whether or not any notes have been added
You can filter changes based on the status tags applied (e.g. High Priority, Action Required, etc) - Once the change list is filtered, any content on the PDF that is 'filtered' will be greyed out. For example, below shows non filtered changes:
And below shows 'filtered' changes:
Tagging and leaving notes on changes
With the change list, you can now also tag specific changes in your comparison, and also leave notes on changes as well using the change list.
Tagging
To tag a change, go to the change list and locate the change you wish to tag. In the top right section of the change card, hover your cursor the tag icon in the top right.
Then left-click to reveal the tagging options for that change. If you wish to tag that change with one of the tagging options, select the tag you wish to add by clicking left click again.
As you can see in the example below, the below change card has been tagged with a 'High Priority' tag.
Furthermore, we can show all tagged changes with the filters option, like the example below.
Notes
You can also add notes to changes to help you organize changes and leave information for yourself and on your team members. To leave a note, click on the change card in the change-list to reveal the note field.
Simply type in the note of your choosing into the field and hit 'Enter' to add the note to the change card. In the below example, we added the note 'Key change' to the change card.
Like before, we can also filter all changes with notes by using the filters to show all changes with notes.
Exporting the Change List (Changes Report)
The changes report allows you to export all changes found in a comparison as either a CSV file or copied as data to your clipboard. This can have various useful application, and below is how you can create this report.
- First, navigate to the top left of the comparison window and select either the Open or Save output options.
- Once selected you will note the change pages option at the bottom of the export window.
There are options here for both DOCX and CSV formats, as well as the reported changes being all changes in the comparison, or only the ones that are marked by the filter. - For this guide, we selected save as a CSV for All changes. Once you have saved the file, you can view the changes in the saved CSV. Below is an example of a CSV Changes Report: