When you have a document that needs to be reviewed or changed and you want to mark the changes you or others make, you can use the Track Changes feature in Word. When this feature is turned on, additions, deletions, moves, and even formatting changes are marked. You can also add comments.
When you’re reviewing the edited document, you can accept or reject any change or comment, view the changes made by individual reviewers, and even view the document as it was before the changes were made. You can also view the document as it would look if you accepted all the changes.
On the Review tab, click the Track Changes button if it isn’t already selected.
Click Final Showing Markup so that you can see your changes.
If you want to monitor your changes, click Reviewing Pane, and specify whether you want the pane to be displayed on the left side or at the bottom of the window.
Edit the content as usual. Note that text you insert is underlined, and text you delete has strikethrough formatting.
To insert a comment, select the text you want to comment on, and click the New Comment button. Type your comment in the balloon that appears or in the Reviewing pane, depending on your settings.
To highlight text without adding a comment, on the Home tab, click the Highlight button, and drag the mouse pointer over the content you want to highlight.
Switch to Final view, review the document for any errors, and then save and close it.
Open a document that has been reviewed and edited. If it’s marked as Read-Only, save it using a different name.- On the Review tab, click the Track Changes button, if it’s selected, to turn off marking changes.
- Switch to Final Showing Markup view if it isn’t already selected.
- Click Show Markup, and specify the types of changes you want to be displayed. If you don’t want to see the markup from every reviewer, specify which reviewers’ changes you do want to see.
- Choose to accept, reject, or locate each change in the document. To accept all the changes, click the down arrow on the Accept button and choose Accept All Changes In Document from the drop-down menu. To reject all changes, click the down arrow on the Reject button, and choose Reject All Changes In Document.
- When you’ve finished, switch the view to Final, review the document for any errors, and then save and close it.
Tip
Note that paragraphs you’ve moved are indicated by a double underline, and that their original location is indicated by a double strikethrough.
Tip
To compare two versions of the same document and mark the changes, click the Compare button on the Review tab, and choose Compare from the drop-down menu. To combine separate files that contain marked changes by different reviewers, click the Compare button, and choose Combine from the drop-down menu.