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Are there any features in MS Word (ideally for Mac) that can be helpful in requirements gathering/tracing?

As an example, at present I'm using comments in the Review pane to index requirements and have an automatic set of links to navigate among them within a large, structured document that give the categories of requirements (functional, non-functional) and stages of the process (dependencies analysis etc.).

Any more tricks and tools that make Word-only requirements management smoother and more useful for the technical (in my case software development) and business departments that need to use (some parts of) my master document?

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    I've used word for technical writing since the end of the 90-ies and my recommendation is to keep things simple. Word will eventually go corrupt on you, links being broken etc. Also large documents seems to have problems, at least on mac, so I'd be prepared to divide the requirements into several documents if it starts growing. If you need list functionality with sorting etc and you do not have so long texts for the requirements, using Excel instead might be a way to go. – Erk Jun 24 '16 at 15:54
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While this isn't exactly for requirements management within Microsoft Word, my company, QRA Corp, has launched QVscribe - a plugin for Microsoft Word that identifies and analyzes requirements to help ensure they are clear and unambiguous. QVscribe analyzes requirements based on best practices from organizations like NASA and INCOSE to flag potential issues that will cause delays and re-work throughout development.

The tool is currently in beta and can be downloaded from https://qracorp.com/qvscribe/ give it a try and let us know what you think!

Adam Anshan

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    Welcome to Writers! Since your company makes a tool for tech writing, you may be able to answer some of the questions we get about it. Please consider sticking around for a time. – Goodbye Stack Exchange Jun 28 '16 at 13:55
  • Thanks! Does it work with Word for Mac? – Michael Jun 29 '16 at 7:42

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