By default, Word automatically uses a different color for each reviewer’s comments and tracked changes in a document. If you prefer all comments and tracked changes to be displayed in a single color, or you want to change the way color is used for tracked changes, you can change the default setting by clicking the Track Changes arrow on the Review tab, and then clicking Change Tracking Options. The Track Changes Options dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 22-3.

Figure 22-3. By default, comments, insertions, deletions, and formatting changes are displayed in a different color for each reviewer.

Use the Track Changes Options dialog box to specify a color for all comments, insertions, deletions, and formatting changes by selecting a color on the Color lists. By default, By Author is selected for Insertions, Deletions, and Comments, which means that Word automatically assigns a different color to each person who inserts comments or tracked changes. Keep in mind that this setting doesn’t always color-code each person’s changes with the same color every time. Instead, the By Author option simply guarantees that every person’s marks appear in a distinct color—the color for each person will most likely change each time Word is restarted and the document is reopened.

If you’re viewing a document that’s color-coded for a number of reviewers, you can quickly see which colors are currently assigned to which reviewers. To do so, click Show Markup on the Review tab then point at Reviewers. You’ll see a list of reviewer names accompanied by color-coded check boxes, as shown in Figure 22-4. In addition to seeing the reviewer color assignments, you can use the Reviewer options (found on the Review tab under Show Markup) to specify whose comments and tracked changes are displayed in the current document by selecting and clearing the check boxes next to each reviewer’s name. When you clear a check box while in Print Layout, Full Screen Reading, or Web Layout view, that reviewer’s comment and tracked change balloons are hidden, and text inserted by the reviewer appears as regular body text. To redisplay a reviewer’s comments and changes, reselect the reviewer’s check box.

Figure 22-4. The Reviewers control is where you choose which reviewer’s comments you want to see.

Things don’t get much easier in Word than inserting a comment. When you’re reviewing a document and see something you want to comment on, simply click in that paragraph (or select the text to which you want the comment to refer), then on the Review tab, click New Comment in the Comments group. A comment balloon appears, extending from the place where you positioned the cursor or your text selection (as demonstrated in the image that follows). Add your comment by simply typing text, then click outside the comment balloon. That’s all there is to it!

You can edit comments you add just as you would edit standard text. If a comment is long and its contents aren’t entirely displayed in a balloon, click the ellipsis in the balloon to open the Reviewing pane. If the Reviewing pane isn’t visible, you can toggle it on by clicking Reviewing Pane on the Review tab.

If you use a Tablet PC or drawing tablet, you can include voice comments and handwritten comments in your documents. Basically, voice comments are sound objects added inside comment balloons. Before you can add a voice comment, you need to add the Insert Voice button to the Quick Access Toolbar. You can find this button under Commands Not In The Ribbon. To create ink comments, simply activate your ink features by moving the pen or clicking the drawing surface. Then click the New Comment button on the Review tab and write your comment in the comment bubble.

When you track changes in a document, you can opt to display or hide the tracking marks while you work. Generally, it’s easier to hide tracked changes if you’re editing and writing text, and it’s better to view tracking marks when you’re reviewing a document’s changes. When Word 2010 tracks changes, it automatically records insertions or deletions in balloons (depending on your view, as described in the preceding section), which you can view in Print Layout, Full Screen Reading, or Web Layout view. Word marks tracked changes in a document as follows:

In addition to these actions, Word automatically inserts a vertical line, called a changed line (also known in the publishing industry as change bars), along the left margin to indicate that a change has been made. This line appears wherever text or formatting changes are made while the Track Changes feature is turned on. Finally, the Reviewing pane automatically generates a summary of changes including the number of insertions, deletions, moves, formatting changes, and comments, as well as a grand total.

Figure 22-6 shows that the document is displayed in Final Showing Markup view, which presents inserted and deleted text in line and formatting changes in balloons. Notice the changed line in the left margin, which specifies that the text next to the line has been modified in some way. For more information about configuring changed lines, see the section titled Customizing the Appearance of Changed Lines.

You’ll also see in Figure 22-6 that the status bar displays Track Changes: On. To view this information in your status bar, right-click the status bar and click Track Changes on the Customize Status Bar menu. By doing so, you can simply click Track Changes in the status bar to control whether the feature is turned on or off.

Figure 22-6. Viewing tracked changes in your document.

You turn Track Changes on or off in a document by using one of the following methods:

When Track Changes is turned on, Word monitors your changes regardless of whether your view reflects the tracked changes as marked-up text. You can always tell whether changes are being tracked by looking at the Track Changes button on the status bar because the button indicates On or Off, depending on your current working mode.

Regardless of your selections for formatting inserted, deleted, moved, and reformatted information, you can still use changed lines to indicate in a general way where changes have occurred in a document. You can specify where changed lines are displayed on the page (along the right, left, or outside borders) and the color in which they are displayed. By default, changed lines are set to Auto, which is typically black. To configure how changed lines are displayed, open the Track Changes Options dialog box and modify the Changed Lines options in the Markup section.

After you configure the changed lines settings, all documents you open that contain tracked changes will use the newly-configured settings. In addition, any currently opened documents that contain tracked changes will be reformatted automatically to reflect the new settings.

You can modify the font styles of balloon and Reviewing pane text and labels in the same manner you modify other styles in Word documents—by using the Styles task pane. To modify the Balloon Text style that controls the balloon labels (such as Comment, Inserted, Deleted, and Formatted) and to change the Comment Text style (the text typed by reviewers), follow these steps:

You can also modify comment text by selecting the text or label in an existing comment in the Reviewing pane or balloon, applying format settings, and then updating the style to match the selected text. For more information about working with styles, see Chapter 12.

When you modify the Comment Text style, you change the appearance of the text only (not the labels) in the comment balloons and comment entries in the Reviewing pane. You do not modify the inserted or deleted text displayed in tracked-change balloons or labels for Reviewing pane entries.

If you prefer to work with the Reviewing pane and not with balloons, you can turn them off. If you prefer, you can use balloons only to show comments and formatting changes. To control balloon display (in Print Layout, Full Screen Reading, and Web Layout views), on the Review tab, click Show Markup then click Balloons, or you can configure the Use Balloons option in the Change Tracking Options dialog box. The following describes the options found under Balloons on the Show Markup list.

Regardless of whether you hide or show balloons, comments are displayed as ScreenTips when you position your mouse pointer over a comment indicator.

If you are new to balloons, you might find that they take some getting used to, even if you’ve used comments and tracking tools in the Reviewing pane. To help you customize balloons to suit your working style, Microsoft provides a few options that you can use to control their width and position. In fact, you can control balloon width and location for online viewing as well as for printing purposes. This section addresses configuring the online presentation of balloons. For more information about configuring balloons for printing, see the section titled Printing Comments and Tracked Changes.

To set the balloon width and specify whether balloons are displayed in the right or left margin, you must configure the Track Changes Options dialog box, as follows:

Unfortunately, you can’t preview your balloon settings from within the Track Changes Options dialog box. Your best plan when configuring balloons is to try a few settings and see which works best for you on your monitor.

You can navigate between comments only by using the Select Browse Object feature (press Ctrl+Alt+Home), which enables you to navigate between comments using Ctrl+Page Up (Previous) and Ctrl+Page Down (Next) in any view.

Another way you can move easily from comment to comment involves using the Navigation pane. Display the pane by selecting the Navigation Pane check box in the Show group on the View tab. Click the Find Options and Additional Search Commands arrow at the top of the box. Click Comments from the list and then choose the reviewer who added the comments you want to find, as shown in the following image:

You can also use the Go To tab in the Find And Replace dialog box (press Ctrl+G). On the Go To tab, you can select Comment on the Go To What list. Then choose to view all reviewers’ comments or a selected reviewer’s comments by selecting Any Reviewer or a specific name in the Enter Reviewer’s Name list. For more information about using the Browse Object feature and the Go To tab, see Chapter 8.

Depending on the current view, the behavior of either set of Next and Previous commands might vary. The views and variations in behavior are described as follows:

When you view balloons, you might notice that some have an ellipsis in the lower-right corner. This symbol indicates that the entire text doesn’t fit in the balloon. To view the remainder of the text, click the ellipsis to open the Reviewing pane, which displays the entire revision or comment.

Naturally, as you read through comments, you might want to respond to them. You can do so in the following ways:

Generally, comments serve a temporary purpose—reviewers insert comments, someone addresses the comments, and then the comments are removed before the document’s final publication (either online or in print). If you work with comments, you need to know how to delete them so you won’t unintentionally include them in your final publication. As you might expect, you can delete comments in several ways. You can delete a single comment, delete comments from a specific reviewer (or reviewers), or delete all comments by using the following techniques:

You can also delete comments one at a time from within the Reviewing pane. To do so, right-click a comment in the Reviewing pane and click Delete Comment on the shortcut menu, or click in a comment and click Delete on the Review tab.

After a document has gone through the review cycle and you receive a file containing a number of tracked changes, you can keep or discard the edits by accepting or rejecting the changes. You can address each edit on a case-by-case basis (generally, this is the recommended practice), or you can accept multiple changes at once. In either case, you can reject and accept proposed changes by using the appropriate buttons on the Review tab or by right-clicking changes (or balloons) then clicking options on the shortcut menu.

Figure 22-7 shows the shortcut menu that you see when you right-click moved text. Notice the new Follow Move option, which you can use to jump to the origin or destination of moved text in relation to the text you right-click. (If you right-click deleted text, you receive the same menu without the Follow Move option; if you right-click inserted text, the Accept Deletion and Reject Deletion options change to Accept Insertion and Reject Insertion.) The next few sections describe ways to accept and reject changes.

Figure 22-7. You can right-click tracked changes to access options you can use to resolve proposed changes, including the option to jump to the origin or destination of moved text.

Accepting or Rejecting All Tracked Changes at Once

At times, you might want to accept or reject all changes in a document. For example, maybe you’ve gone through the document carefully, reading and changing the document in Final view. When you’re satisfied with the document, you want to simply accept all changes instead of resolving each change individually. You can do so by executing a single command.

To accept or reject all changes in a document, use the Accept All Changes In Document or Reject All Changes In Document commands. To access these commands, click the arrow below Accept or Reject on the Review tab then click the appropriate command, as shown in Figure 22-8.

Figure 22-8. You can accept or reject all changes or only those changes by a particular reviewer by using the Accept and Reject options, which are accessible from the Review tab.

In addition to accepting or rejecting all changes in a document, you can show a subset of reviewers’ changes and accept or reject only those changes. To control which changes are displayed in your document, click Show Markup on the Review tab, click Reviewers, and then select which reviewers’ changes you want to display and resolve. After you configure your display, click the Accept or Reject arrow, and then click the Accept All Changes Shown or Reject All Changes Shown option.

Tip

Between resolving tracked changes individually and globally accepting or rejecting all changes in an entire document lays the realm of accepting and rejecting edits contained in selected text. In other words, you can resolve editing issues on a piecemeal basis. For example, you might want to select a paragraph or two that you’ve reviewed. To do so, select the specific text, and then click Accept or Reject on the Review tab to accept or reject the tracked changes contained in the selected text.

Inside Out: Comments, Revisions, and the Document Inspector

You can remove all comments and revisions by using the Document Inspector. To do so, on the File tab, click Check For Issues in the Info tab, and then click Inspect Document. Ensure that the Comments, Revisions, Versions, And Annotations check box is selected, and then click Inspect. If the Document Inspector finds any leftover comments or revisions, you can click Remove All to accept all revision marks and delete all comments.

Keep in mind that when you use the Remove All option in the Document Inspector to delete all revisions and comments, you cannot use the Undo command to retrieve the revisions and comments. If you suddenly realize you do not want to remove the revisions and comments after you click Remove All, your only recourse is to close the document without saving changes. Therefore, always save your documents before you run the Document Inspector!

Ideally, when you use Compare, the original and the revised document won’t both contain tracked changes. If either document contains tracked changes, Word treats the documents as though the changes have been accepted and doesn’t display them in the comparison document. Additionally, all revisions in the comparison document are attributed to a single author, and you can see what changes have been made to the original document regardless of whether track changes were turned on when modifications were being made. The changes made in the revised document are shown in the original as tracked changes. To compare two versions of one document and view the differences, follow these steps:

In contrast, you use Combine to combine, or merge, two or more documents. All modifications made to the original or revised documents become tracked changes. Unlike the Compare feature, if the revised document contains tracked changes, these changes appear as tracked changes in the combined document. All authors are identified and their revisions are combined into one document. To use the Combine function, use the following steps:

To combine additional documents, combine the resulting Combined Document with another document containing changes.

You can edit the document normally as you work alongside your co-authors. The edits appear in balloons, along with your contact name, letting your co-author know where the changes are being made in the document. Word will prompt you to save the file to update all changes so that you will be able to see the changes your co-authors are making as well (see Figure 22-11).

Figure 22-11. The message bar prompts you to save the file to update changes.

The Info tab of Backstage view also provides you with important information about the status of the file, the co-authors currently working on the file, and any version information you need to know. You can click Save to save your file changes and update the screen display. If you are working with Office Communicator, you’ll be able to tell whether she is available for contact by the colors displayed to the left of a co-author’s name. Green means you can reach the co-author by clicking the contact information and choosing one of the communication options; red means the co-author is busy; and yellow means the person is away (see Figure 22-12).

Figure 22-12. The Info tab shows how many people are working on the file and lets you know the status of the file.

When you are working simultaneously in a file with a co-author, you can contact her by e-mail, instant message, or phone to ask questions about the file, discuss possibilities, or just generally talk through your plans for the edits. All the tools you need are right there in the document window.

Click the indicator in the status bar showing the number of authors currently working on the document; a popup list displays the names of your co-authors (see Figure 22-13). Click the name of the person you want to contact, and that person’s contact card appears (see Figure 22-14).

Figure 22-13. Click the indicator in the status bar to see who else is working in your document.

Figure 22-14. Your co-author’s contact card offers different ways to communicate.

The contact card provides you with several different ways to contact your co-author. You can choose one of the following options:

The new co-authoring features in Word 2010 are great when you need to collaborate in real time using either SharePoint Workspace 2010 or the Word Web App. Not all files make good candidates for co-authoring, however. If your file uses any of the following elements, Word developers say co-authoring might not work the way it should:

If any of these items are currently in use in the document you want to share, you might need to resort to a sequential check-in/check-out process in order to get all the revisions you need in that specific file. Depending on the nature of the file, you might also be able to remove the elements that interfere with co-authoring and then add them after the co-authoring work on the document is done.