Using Different Colors with Tracked Changes

Deborah uses Track Changes to note edits made in a document. She made corrections in a document with Track Changes turned on, so my changes were in one color. Her boss reviewed the document and gave it back to her, asking that the next round of changes be in a different color than the first round was. Seborah wonders if there is a way to specify that her next set of changes be in a different color.

Word's Track Changes feature chooses markup colors based on the user name. To make future changes you need to alter the user name slightly. Here are the steps if you are using a version of Word prior to Word 2007:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the User Information tab is displayed. (Click here to see a related figure.)
3. Change the Name field value by adding or deleting a middle initial or name or by adding a number to the end of the name.
4. Change the Initials field to correspond more closely to the change you made in the Name field.
5. Click OK.

The steps are different if you are using Word 2007:

1. Display the Review tab on the ribbon.
2. Click the down-arrow under the Track Changes option in the Tracking group.
3. Choose Change User Name. Word displays the Popular options of the Word Options dialog box. (Click here to see a related figure.)
4. Change the User Name field value by adding or deleting a middle initial or name or by adding a number to the end of the name.
5. Change the Initials field to correspond more closely to the change you made in the User Name field.
6. Click OK.

Edits with Track Changes will now be in a new color. When the mouse hovers over change, the new user name will be displayed. If you change the user name back to the original value, future edits will revert to color that was first assigned to that name.

When you are done, be sure to change your user name back to the original value so that other documents will be labeled with that name instead of a convoluted name for editing purposes.