How to render Comments and Track Changes in Microsoft Office Documents

Description

Veritas eDiscovery Platform (eDP) uses a tool called Muhimbi to handle the native imaging of Microsoft Office documents. By default, Muhimbi is not configured to display Comments or Track Changes content in Office documents. This can cause discrepancies between Text and Native views in eDP Analysis & Review.

Documents processed into eDP that contain hidden content will have the File Flag set: File contains hidden content. A Hidden Content popup in the eDP User Interface will also be present. Figure 1 shows an example from a Word document.

Figure 1.
 

For more information regarding the handling of hidden content, see the section titled Hidden Content Considerations in the eDP Case Administration Guide.

Steps to display Comments and Track Changes for Word documents in eDP Native view

Muhimbi's behavior can be changed to allow the native rendering of this hidden content if needed, but only for Word documents. The following changes are system wide and therefore affect all documents rendered in all cases. The changes cannot be made on a case by case or document by document basis.

These changes need to be repeated on all eDP servers in the cluster that may possibly do imaging of documents (Utility Nodes, Worker Nodes, etc).

1. Navigate to directory: D:\Clearwell Packages\Muhimbi Document Converter\
2. Open the below config file in a text editor (after having first made a backup copy):

3. Search for the following line of text: WordProcessorConverterFullFidelity.RevisionsAndCommentsDisplayMode
   • Change the value from the default Final to FinalShowingMarkup 

The updated line is highlighted line in the screen shot below.

4. In the same config file, find the line containing: WordProcessorConverterFullFidelity.RevisionsAndCommentsMarkupMode

• Change the value from the default InLine to Balloon

5. Save the configuration file. 
6. Restart the ESAImageHelper service.

Documents with hidden comments and tracked changes should now render that data in eDP Native view. Figure 2 shows a Word document with Comments and Track Changes now displayed in eDP Native view.

Figure 2.

Note: If documents have already been rendered prior to this change, their cached images need to be cleared and re-rendered. This process is completed on a case by case basis in the eDP User Interface using Case Home > Processing > Imaging & Rendering or by contacting Veritas Support to help clear the image cache. 

Note: This change will only be effective on the Word documents that have been imaged with Muhimbi.