Overview

This new release is a maintenance release that fixes one issue in DokuMate for Excel. That issue leads to an error message if:

• an Excel Workbook defines one or more named ranges that are relevant for DokuMate’s DocumentTracker feature and
• any of those named ranges contains a #REF! error in its definition.

With this release, such defective named ranges are ignored rather than reported as an error.

Background

An Excel workbook with a correct DokuMate title page defines named ranges such as:

• dp_docTypeAndNumber (e.g., Exhibit 1),
• dp_docTitle (e.g., Service Catalog),
• dp_docId (e.g., 11-100),
• dp_docDate (e.g., 2019-09-09), and
• dp_docRevisionNumber (e.g., 1.0).

Using the DocumentTracker feature, DokuMate for Excel can read and write those named ranges and, therefore, make changes to the title page without you having to open the Excel workbook.

The problem starts when users delete whole rows or columns that contain any of those named ranges. In that case, the named range no longer points to a cell but rather #REF!. And that was pointed out by the error message.

Roughly two weeks after the previous release, this minor release includes a potentially big time-saver: the automatic update of the DokuMate change logs, or document histories, of Word and Excel documents. You can add entries to the change logs of all Word and Excel documents contained in a DocumentTracker with a click of a button.

How do you do that? Selecting the Update Change Logs item in the Cleanup menu will open the following dialog, which lets you specify the new change log entry and the update behavior.

The date, revision, author, and status values will be taken from the corresponding document properties that can be set using the DocumentTracker, for example. The comment must be provided in this dialog.

Further, you can select the update mode. “Append” will add a new entry unless an entry with the same date and revision already exists as the current last entry. “Overwrite” will add a new entry or overwrite an existing entry having the same date and revision. Finally, reset will remove all existing entries and add new first entries.

To be able to update the change logs, DokuMate needs to be able to identify them. In Word documents, change logs are Word tables contained in Rich Text content controls having a tag “#ChangeLog”. In Excel workbooks, change logs are Excel tables having a name “ChangeLog”. In both cases, those tables must have five (5) columns for the date, revision, author, status, and comment, in that order. All DokuMate Word and Excel templates contain change logs (or document histories).

Overview

This new release improves the usability of selected DokuMate features, for example, by adding or improving dialog windows.

Further, one long-awaited new feature is the ability to freely configure new DocumentTrackers based on Word documents or templates, or the active Excel workbook. With this new feature, you can easily define and store rich meta-data in Microsoft Office documents and, thus, view, edit, and update that meta-data using the DocumentTracker.

Changed or Enhanced Functionality

DokuMate for Word and Excel

• NegotiationTracker Button. The NegotiationTracker menu was replaced with a simple button that opens a new dialog window.
  • Old Behavior. Previously, you had to select a menu item from the NegotiationTracker menu to create a NegotiationTracker by DocId or by Second Party. Next, two folder dialogs appeared and you were asked for the source folder and the NegotiationTracker output folder.
  • New Behavior. Clicking the NegotiationTracker button opens a dialog window that lets you choose between the NegotiationTracker by DocId or by Second Party and enter or browse for the source and output folders. When entering or selecting the source folder, the output folder is set to a meaningful default. Previous selections are remembered, making the creation of NegotiationTrackers easier and more efficient.

DokuMate for Word

• Content Controls Split Button. A split button is a standard control that combines a button and a menu. Clicking the button invokes the default action, which, in this case, opens a newly designed dialog window that allows you to select and insert content controls, which are bound to document properties contained in a custom XML part. The newly designed menu is shown when you click on the small, downward-pointing triangle or chevron on the right. The menu offers two basic features and three advanced features:
  • Basic Features. The first basic feature, Insert Content Controls, is identical to the standard action invoked when you press the button. The second basic feature, Edit Document Properties, allows you to edit the document properties to which the content controls are bound. You can change, add, remove, or reorder those document properties, which is nice because you can now use Word documents and templates to configure the DocumentTrackers created by DokuMate for Excel.
  • Advanced Features. The advanced features have existed all the time, however, on the Developer ribbon tab. They are now included in the menu because they might be generally useful. The Bind Content Controls function can be used to re-bind the content controls to the document properties contained in the document, e.g., if the contents of such content controls do not seem to be synchronized. The Restore Document Properties function restores the document properties from the content control data, which is useful if the document properties were previously removed, e.g., by using the Document Inspector. Finally, the Delete Document Properties can be used to remove the custom XML part containing the document properties.

DokuMate for Excel

• DocumentTracker Split Button. As explained above, a split button combines a button and a menu, with the button invoking the standard action (of creating a local DocumentTracker in this case) and the menu offering the same and further actions, in this case the creation of a SharePoint DocumentTracker. In both cases, a newly designed dialog window is opened, providing the possibility to (1) select the DocumentTracker template, (2) browse for the root folder containing the tracked documents, (3) select further options, and (4) edit the document properties contained in the selected DocumentTracker template. Previous selections are remembered, making it easier and more efficient to create DocumentTrackers.
• Document Properties Button. A new Template group with a new Document Properties button was added to the DokuMate ribbon tab. The new Document Properties function allows you to edit the document properties contained in the active Excel workbook, so that you can use those to configure newly created DocumentTrackers. This way, you could create Excel templates for different kinds of DocumentTrackers.

Overview

This new release is a maintenance release that fixes one bug in DokuMate for Word, enhances existing functionality, and pays off some technical debt.

Bug Fixes

Under certain circumstances, the transformation of a narrative document into the tabular form could hang due to a bug, which is fixed in this release.

Changed or Enhanced Functionality

With this release, the local short-term backup feature introduced in v2.12.2 is leveraged in more use cases, e.g., when finishing the review or updating fields in the Document Tracker. Thus, should you have accepted all tracked changes in a number of documents by finishing the review, for example, you have the option to undo that operation in individual documents.

Overview

If this page just popped up, this is because DokuMate for Office v2.12.2 contains new and enhanced features and some changed behavior that you need to understand. So, please read on now or later. You can also open this page again at any point in time, e.g., by clicking the Release Notes button in the DokuMate Ribbon tab.

So, what do you need to know? Most importantly (but there’s even more), DokuMate for Word is now fully SharePoint-enabled. For example, you can transform or apply templates to Word documents stored on SharePoint. For technical reasons, those features could previously only be used for documents stored in the file system, i.e., on your hard drive or a file server.

To enable transformations of documents stored on SharePoint while keeping track of how your documents changed over time, DokuMate uses SharePoint versions rather than asking you to specify a new file name for the transformed document, at least in most cases. The exception is when the transformation changes the document form, e.g., between the

• narrative and
• tabular or ReportCard

forms. In those cases, DokuMate will ask you for a new file name.

Now, this is different from what happened when you transformed documents stored locally. And we felt the new SharePoint experience is actually better than what we’ve always had for local files. Thus, rather than having two different experiences, we’ve changed the local experience as well to offer one consistent experience. This means that DokuMate will only ask you for a new file name if the transformation changes the document form. Instead of asking you for a file name, wherever a backup copy should be created, DokuMate does that for you in the background.

Based on the need to store and deal with backup copies, we created a new Local Short-Term Backup feature. This is meant for short-term backups (or recent versions), which are stored in your local Temp folder (“%localappdata%\Temp\DokuMate Backups” to be precise). That folder will be cleaned up using the typical Windows file system cleanup features. You can access or work with the latest backup copy of your active document by clicking File / DokuMate (right under Info at the top left), which opens the new DokuMate Backstage tab. There, you can create a backup, open the latest backup, restore the latest backup (e.g., to continue working on that one), or compare the active document with the latest backup (e.g., to see the effect of the last transformation in track changes mode).

New Functionality

DokuMate for Word

• Local Short-Term Backups. As described in the overview, this new feature is used by DokuMate for Word to create local short-term backups of documents stored in the file system when it transforms such documents. Further, you can also create backups as you like, e.g., before making changes that you might want to roll back. You can also open the latest backup, restore the latest backup, and compare the active document with its latest backup. All of those features are accessible on the new DokuMate Backstage tab, which you open by clicking on File / DokuMate. The comparison feature is also accessible via the Comparison Documents menu in the DokuMate Ribbon tab.
• Compare Sets of Documents. This new DokuMate for Word feature creates comparison documents with tracked changes (legal blackline) from one or more sets of revised documents (stored in one root folder) and exactly one corresponding set of original documents (stored in a separate root folder). Across those sets, documents are matched by DocId. Within each set, the DocId values must be unique. DocId values are either entered on the documents’ title pages or using the Document Tracker (see DokuMate for Excel). This feature is accessible via the Comparison Documents menu in the DokuMate Ribbon tab.

DokuMate for Excel

• Capitalized Terms. This new feature finds unformatted capitalized terms in Word documents. For example, it can be used to find any other capitalized terms (e.g., Unit of Measure) after having formatted references, term definitions, and defined term usages. The list produced by DokuMate will likely bring up terms that are proper names (e.g., countries, cities, organizations) or terms that lack a definition. To reduce that list, you can apply the Proper Name character style to proper names and those marked occurrences will no longer appear on that list.

Changed or Enhanced Functionality

DokuMate for Word

• Transform Group. As noted in the overview, DokuMate is now fully SharePoint-enabled. The necessary changes are almost completely related to functionality accessible in the Transform group of the DokuMate Ribbon tab. Depending on where the active document to be transformed is stored (i.e., on SharePoint or in the file system), DokuMate will now either create SharePoint versions (for SharePoint documents) or local backups (for documents stored in the file system).

DokuMate for Excel

• References. The formatting of references such as Schedule A (Definitions) or Exhibit 1 (Service Catalog) is now restricted to Word documents, where, using those examples, references are formatted by applying the Reference TypeAndNumber character style to Schedule A and Exhibit 1 and the Reference Title character style to Definitions and Service Catalog.
• Defined Terms. This menu has been restructured slightly to deal with the differences in the text formatting capabilities of Word (powerful) vs. those of Excel and PowerPoint (very basic) on the other hand. For both term definitions and defined term usages, there is a function that will find term definitions or defined term usages regardless of their formatting in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Next, there are functions that will do the following in Word documents only:
  • find unformatted term definitions or defined term usages;
  • format term definitions (using the Defined Term Definition character style) or usages (using the Defined Term character style); and
  • find formatted definitions or usages.