Check https://www.simuldocs.com/ It's a version control SaaS for Word documents. They took a lot of inspiration from git
Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
91–100 of 149 posts
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#92Is there anything out there, capable of working with MSOffice stuff in a granular and collaborative way?
No, but people seem to get work done anyway. It's very strange to me.
My current and previous jobs are very corporate, so much of the business and IT uses Office products all the time. I somehow managed to set the standard that I don't do it that way. I still have to sometimes, but it's not very often.
The key is to acknowledge that using Office effectively is a difficult skill. It makes management feel smart that they know how to do something technical a developer doesn't. Then it's just a matter of finding and highlighting alternatives. Plain text and/or a wiki covers almost everything in my experience.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#93We fixed this at my company by converting our documents to markdown and using git. Can can also use LaTeX. They're honestly better formats for things like user manuals anyways because its trivial to display them on web and devices.
We have our non-technical editors using Markdown and git just fine, but you may have a lot of initial resistance. We were able to force them to switch because we're mostly a tech company. They hated it at first even though they love it now.
Never found a good solution to powerpoint
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#94I worked in clinical research with the FDA and complex word documents. I am not a programmer, but lordy lord, how often did I wish we would use something like git.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#95Track changes works for Word. Still no solution for Excel. One thing that can make things better is to teach people to use Styles correctly.
Well, most people, including me I must admit, are using excel when they actually should use a database.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#96Use sharepoint, office365, and Teams. It versions, it supports collaborative editing, no more mailing things around, and so on.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#97We fixed this at my company by converting our documents to markdown and using git. Can can also use LaTeX. They're honestly better formats for things like user manuals anyways because its trivial to display them on web and devices. We have our non-technical editors using Markdown and git just fine, but you may have a lot of initial resistance. We were able to force them to switch because we're mostly a tech company.…
> Never found a good solution to powerpoint
tpp or LibreOffice's Impress.
Using open formats diff better. There's also the homebrew method I use where I decompress the document and store that tree in git too, sometimes it helps and is easy to recompress into document format. It's part of my regular checkin script.
Long story short, some recruiters don't like pdf's (from LaTeX) so I've got a mixed setup of LaTeX and libreoffice. The LaTeX copy produces several different documents with varying amounts of personal information. This is toggled through variables in the script so some outputs are web-safe (nothing but email), some I sent to recruiters which have temporary phone numbers on which are disconnected when I'm FTE. The other has a real SIM mobile on that I use on company internal job boards.
LaTeX wins here, but to keep some recruiters happy I copy the changes into an odt format. Yes I know about Calibre.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#98Share point and Teams all the way
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#99> I can’t believe non-geeks have lived like this for 30 years. Given how shitty MS software has always been, I can't believe people not only pay money for it but also accept it as the norm. As for your question, non-geeks have been coping with this by saving a copy of a document before each edit so that when the inevitable catastrophe occurs, they can roll back. As a geek, you can use git manually. Adding that as a f…
Ah yes, I love working out which is the most recent document out of: * Document1 FINAL * Document1 FINAL DRAFT (DO NOT EDIT) * Document1 FINAL EDITED * Document1 v2 FINAL
Outside of development work using repositories, I also handle a good amount of design documents, think Indesign/Photoshop etc. My workflow is like this:
- Substantial changes result in a new version number at the end of the file:
Document v34
- Branching to try out ideas uses a marker what this idea was:
Document v34-2 test-color-scheme
If the idea is approved, it results in a new version:
Document v35
- Tagging for long running designs adds the context where it was last used, this can be considered a final release version
Document v36 - July 2020 promo
Once a file is used like that, an export copy with the same name is saved in the same folder:
Document v36 - July 2020 promo.pdf
This document is copied using a general name and then moved to a different folder:
promo2020/july/flyer/Document.pdf
This is what is printed, e-mailed etc. Date and file size allow comparisons to find out which version this was.
While this falls apart for testing a lot of similar ideas at the same time, it has served me well to have a history of snapshots and their context, have all final documents archived, and ignore (or delete) all the versions in between, while still saving progress over days/weeks.
Re: Ask HN: “Git” for Microsoft Office?
#100I've worked with non-geeks for many years and the best results were achieved with Sharepoint or O365. The versioning system it's simpler for them than GIT; it has a lot of missings but has great support on the clients' apps, specially MSWord and the revision and merge features.
There's a variant to use TortoiseGit as a git desktop client (only Windows) versioning directly office documents because of that one pops up the resolution of the conflicts directly with the office apps.
There're some folks followed me to markdown-git using desktop clients like Typora and Gitbook (editor and other services), but it's not suitable for everyone.