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The problem with working in a paperless office is that there can be so many versions of the same electronic document floating around that it's a chore to simply determine who has the most recent one. But that can change if you and your teammates try NextPage 2.0, a remarkably simple tool for tracking document versions.

With this release, NextPage adds a handy Activity Center control panel that shows you the status of all the documents you're tracking in real time. But first, an introduction to NextPage for those who aren't familiar.

NextPage is a lightweight application that takes no IT staff to load or administer, so anyone can have it up and running in minutes. Have your entire team download the client (a 30-day demo is available at www.nextpage.com) and load it on your PCs. As you create and share Microsoft Office documents, whether Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, NextPage tracks them and let you know where versions are and how they've changed.

When NextPage launched earlier this year, it's key selling point was the graphical interface that shows exactly how document versions relate to each other. If you mail a document to three people for edits, the graphical view shows how the versions branch off and also lets you easily combine the changes made to multiple versions of the same document. Differences show up in the standard Track Changes mode, which lets you accept or reject edits individually.

With version 2.0, NextPage retains all that was groundbreaking in the first releases and adds a new Activity Center for quick tracking. The Activity Center is a dashboard for NextPage, showing the status of all your tracked documents at once. More than just a list, the Activity Center lets you group documents together by project, so you can see at a glance the status of all the documents that relate to a specific goal. A smaller window at the bottom of the Activity Center lets you jump to a different project with one click.

NextPage 2's new Activity Center gives you real-time status information about all your tracked documents and sorts them by project.

The Activity Center doesn't just let you know who has which document at any given moment, but also the status of those documents. Friendly icons mark the various possible activities, such as opening and editing a document, so that you can quickly tell what's happening with a document. You can see when someone has begun editing the Web site text that you sent them and gauge how far along those HR documents are.

What makes NextPage truly remarkable is that it operates without a central data server, so there's no one database constantly gathering information. Instead, NextPage sits on your desktop and lets you work the way you normally would. Take documents home on a flash drive or work offline while on a trip. When you get connected again, NextPage will adjust the tracking to reflect any changes that were made. You can e-mail documents as normal, and even track changes from non-NextPage users. The app doesn't restrict your workflow.

Pricing for NextPage is $99 per user per year. Try the 30-day demo and see if the power of NextPage can help your office to run smoother.

NextPage's key selling point is its graphical tracking view, which show you all the versions of a document, and how they relate to one another. It also lets you compare versions easily to see the changes between them.