When two or more people collaborate on a document, one person usually creates and "owns" the document and the others review it, adding or revising content to make it more accurate, logical, or readable. In Word, reviewers can turn on the Track Changes feature so that the revisions they make to the active document are recorded without the original text being lost. (Note that Track Changes affects only the active document, not any other documents that might also be open.) You then edit the text as usual, and your changes are recorded for later review.
To turn on the Track Changes feature:
Point to Track Changes on the Tools menu, and then click Highlight Changes.
In the Highlight Changes dialog box, select the Track changes check box, and then click OK.
Tip
Regardless of the method you use to turn Track Changes on or off, the color of the dot on the TRK button indicates its status—a blue button indicates that the Track Changes feature is turned on, and a gray button indicates that it’s turned off.
You manage the Track Changes feature from the Track Changes page of the Word Preferences dialog box.
By default, the Track Changes feature indicates revisions as follows:
Inserted text is underlined.
Deleted text is crossed out in Normal view or, in Print Layout view, displayed in balloons in the right margin.
Formatting changes are displayed in balloons in the right margin.
Any line of the document that contains a change is indicated with a vertical line in the left margin, so you can quickly scan a document for changes.
For each of these types of edits, you can choose other marking techniques—but unless these somehow conflict with an internal system, there’s really no good reason to. These standard marks are used and recognized by Word users all around the world, and deviating from the standard could cause unnecessary confusion if the document is distributed to other people with the tracked changes shown.
By default, the color in which Word tracks insertions, deletions, and formatting changes is set to By Author. With this setting, Word assigns a specific color to each person who edits the document with change tracking turned on. Each reviewer will have a unique color assignment within the document, but that color assignment won’t be the same among different documents.
Note
Word identifies reviewers by the user information stored on the User Information page of the Word Preferences dialog box. To view or edit the user information, open the Word Preferences dialog box and, under Personal Settings, click User Information.
If it’s important to you that changes you make and comments you insert are always tracked in a specific color, you can specify that color by selecting it from a list. You can select different colors to indicate different types of changes.
You can display a ScreenTip identifying the name of the reviewer who made a specific change and when the change was made, by pointing to a revision or balloon.
You can work with revisions in the following ways by using the commands available from the Reviewing toolbar:
If you want to track changes without showing them on the screen, you can hide the revisions by clicking Final in the Display for Review list. To redisplay the revisions, click Final Showing Markup in the Display for Review list. You can also display the original version, with or without revisions.
When revisions are visible in the document, you can select the types of revisions that are displayed, from the Show list—for example, you can display only comments or only insertions and deletions. You can also display or hide the revisions of specific reviewers from this list.
You can move forward or backward from one revision mark or comment to another by clicking the Next or Previous button.
You can incorporate a change into the document by selecting the changed text and then clicking the Accept button.
You can undo the selected change or restore the original text by clicking the Reject button.
You can accept all the changes at once by clicking the Accept arrow and then clicking Accept All Changes in Document. To reject all the changes at once, click the Reject arrow and then click Reject All Changes in Document.
You can accept or reject multiple changes by selecting a block of text containing changes you want to process and then clicking the Accept or Reject button.
You can accept or reject only certain types of changes or changes from specific reviewers by displaying only the changes you want to accept or reject, clicking the Accept or Reject arrow, and then clicking All Changes Shown in the list.
