10

My supervisor made some changes to my Overleaf report. Before working through them, I decided to make a copy of the file for easy future reference (if required). However, now when I go onto the copied file, none of the comments have been copied over!

I also encounter this problem in the original file when I cut a block of text (that has comments in it) to another location - the comments simply disappear. Pressing 'undo' returns the text, but not the comments. This is very frustrating as I seem to have lost a lot of changes simply due to cutting and pasting. Version histories do not contain the comments either.

Is there any way to get them back? Thanks in advance!

Improve this question
2
  • 3
    Have you contacted the Overleaf Helpdesk about this? I hear the LaTeX fu of their support staff is really good.
    – Mico
    Commented Jun 11, 2020 at 17:45
  • Is it about copying one single file or copying the entire project folder?
    – High GPA
    Commented Jun 19, 2022 at 13:32

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8

(I'm on support staff at Overleaf.)

It's not 100% clear from your question if you're asking about copying an entire project (often times Overleaf users colloquially refer to this as "copying the file" when in fact they are copying the entire project), or if you're copying only a single file within a project. Either way, yes, comments and tracked changes are not transferred when you copy a project or copy a single file within a project.

More broadly, when copying an entire project, the project's history, chat, track changes, and sharing settings are empty in the resulting new project. Effectively only the project's source files are copied into a new project, and the compiler engine and main file settings are transferred.

For more information, see Copying a Project: Copied Projects

As for comment and tracked change positions being lost when copying and pasting large chunks of text, or undoing/redoing changes that involve large chunks of text: this can happen in rare cases, unfortunately. Usually our system catches this and in most cases our support team can restore a previous snapshot of the comments and tracked changes.

If you'd like to see if this is possible, please write to us at [email protected] with the following information:

  • the URL of the affected project;
  • the name(s) of file(s) in the project where you require track changes restored;
  • the date and time that the problem occurred; and
  • the time zone you were in when the problem happened.

We will then check our systems to see if a previous snapshot can be restored.

Improve this answer
7
  • 3
    Thank Paul, that makes sense. I wonder if this is something Overleaf is planning on adding functionality to in the future? On the surface it seems like a simple fix, but is probably more complex under the hood!
    – ddm_ingram
    Commented Jun 12, 2020 at 8:10
  • 3
    @ddm_ingram you're welcome! It's not something we have definite plans to change, but we have had similar requests. (Though it should be said that many users also expect that copying a project does not transfer this information. So if we make a change here, I suspect we might structure it so that both options are available somehow.) I'll make a note for our team to consider this in our internal tracking of these requests, thanks for the feedback.
    – Paul Gessler
    Commented Jun 12, 2020 at 9:36
  • @PaulGessler can also confirm I've tried to find this functionality to keep track of different iterations of feedback (making duplicates of .tex files to track progression and change). Would make more sense if I was also using .git integration I guess!
    – Mr G
    Commented Nov 12, 2021 at 7:27
  • 1
    @HighGPA I had assumed I had understood the question correctly based on the fact that the question author accepted the answer not long after I wrote the answer, but I've added some more information for the other cases now. Hope it helps.
    – Paul Gessler
    Commented Jun 19, 2022 at 13:24
  • 1
    hello, google docs tranfer comments and track changes when copying it. So isn't making a copy of the project by default expect the comments and track changes transported along at minimum given premium service is around 100$?
    – bonCodigo
    Commented May 15 at 11:50

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .