Understanding Document Changes in Context

The Departures Table is a specialized report that helps you see how a document has changed—with full context. Instead of just showing edits inline or as redlines, it highlights the entire section or clause where a change occurred. This makes it easier to understand changes at a glance, especially in long or complex documents.

The Departures Table is typically used during collaborative editing or negotiation processes. It's especially helpful when:

• You want to quickly review all meaningful changes without digging through redlines.

• You're working with large documents and need a summary that highlights changes in full paragraphs or sections.

• You need a clean, shareable summary of updates to send to others for review or approval.

How to export a Departures Table

1. Run a Redline in Draftable comparison

2. In the Draftable viewer, navigate to any of the export options in the top-left, and select Departures Table. A Departures Table can be generated for Open, Save, Save to DMS, Copy to Clipboard or Email.

How to configure a custom Departures Table template

Draftable includes a default Word document template for the Departures Table, but you can customize this to suit your needs. This can be achieved through either creating your own custom template or overriding the default template.

Option 1: Using your own document template

You can create a Departures Table template from an empty document just by including a table element. Below are requirements for the table:

• At least four columns for the following content in the following order:

1. Departure ID

2. Section Reference

3. Changed clause (departure)

4. Review notes/comments

• Table header

• An empty row

Example of a valid template

 

Option 2: Overriding Draftable template

1. Navigate to Draftable installation folder, e.g. %LOCALAPPDATA%\DraftableDesktop\current or C:\Program Files (x86)\Draftable\Draftable Desktop and open Resources folder.

2. Create a copy of DeparturesTableTemplate.docx file and open it in MS Word and enable it for editing.

3. Style the document according to your needs

   1. Elements that can be customized:

1. 1. 1. Header and footer
      2. Font family and size
      3. Table header titles
      4. Adding more table columns on the right hand side
         
         

   2. Elements that cannot be customized:

      1. Removing or adding columns at position 1-4

      2. Changing the order of columns at position 1-4
          
         

          

         Deploying a custom Departures Table template

         1. 1. Copy the document created to the Microsoft Office templates folder, typically at: %AppData%\Microsoft\Templates

            2. Verify the new template is working by generating a Departures Table report