Printing Documents without Markup

Beginning with Word 2002 Microsoft included the ability to print your documents with or without "markup" showing. Markup is defined as editing marks (using Word's Track Changes feature) and comments placed in a document during its development.

You can control whether or not markup is printed by displaying the Print dialog box and using the Print What drop-down list. (Click here to see a related figure.) If you choose Document, then only the document is printed. If you choose Document with Markup, then the markup is printed along with the document.

Actually, the default behavior of the Print What drop-down list is rather odd. In fact, at times it can seem to have a mind of its own. In doing testing, I found out that the default for the Print What drop-down list will be Document unless one of the following is true in versions of Word prior to Word 2007:

• You have Markup chosen on the View menu.
• You have Final with Markup chosen in the Display for Review drop-down list on the Reviewing toolbar.
• You have Original with Markup chosen in the Display for Review drop-down list on the Reviewing toolbar.

If you are using Word 2007, then the default for the Print What drop-down list will be Document unless one of the following is true:

• You have Final Showing Markup chosen in the Tracking group on the Review tab of the ribbon.
• You have Original Showing Markup chosen in the Tracking group on the Review tab of the ribbon.

Changing the setting of the Print What drop-down list to Document does not override the Markup setting. Basically, all you are doing is specifying that you want this one printing of the document to not show markup. The next time you display the Print dialog box, the Print What drop-down list is again set based on the Markup setting in the document. (It is not the Print What drop-down list that is "sticky," but the Markup setting, which always overrides the Print What drop-down list.)

The setting of the Markup option is saved with your document. Similarly, if you have a template open, then the setting can be saved with the template, to be used as a default for all future documents based on the template.

If you want the Print What drop-down list to always default to Document, then you need to turn off the Markup option in the document or in the template, and then save the document and template. Since the setting is saved on a per-document basis, you may need to do this in lots of documents to get the effect you want.