Track Changes

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Track Changes' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Changing How Changes are Noted in Word
Do you want to modify how Word marks changes in your document? It's easy to do, depending on your version of Word.

Colors for Tracking Changes not Acting Properly
When the Track Changes feature is turned on, Word, by default, displays the edits made by each document editor in different colors. If you aren't seeing different colors for each editor on your system, it could be related to a configuration setting in the Options dialog box. This tip explains the setting and walks you through changing it.

Consolidating Changes under a Single User
When using Track Changes, you may want to have your edits appear to be those of a different user. Here's how to fool Word into thinking you are someone else.

Deleting Table Columns with Track Changes Turned On
If you are editing a document with Track Changes turned on, Word won't let you delete a column in a table and have it marked as a change. There are ways around this problem, which are discussed in this tip.

Disabling Track Changes Completely
Word's Track Changes feature cannot be disabled, but you can change the keyboard shortcut used to turn it on. This tip describes how to find that shortcut and delete it.

Displaying Edits by Date
Track Changes is a great tool; it allows you to see what changes were made in a document and then determine whether you want to accept those changes or not. It could be very helpful to view changes by the date on which they were made. This tip discusses how you can view changes in this manner.

Getting a Warning for Markup
Many people, when collaborating on a document with others, use the Track Changes feature to show the effects of their editing. When printing your document, you may not want Word to include these changes in the printout. You can instruct the program to warn you if you try to print and there are any tracked changes or comments in the document.

Making Sure Changes and Comments are Anonymous
When using Track Changes, Word normally notes the originator of a particular comment or change. This information can then be displayed so that other readers can know who did what. If you want comments and changes to be anonymous, then there are a couple of things you can do, as described in this tip.

Marking Changes with Only a Vertical Bar in Word 2007
If you want to configure how Word 2007 displays changes in your document, you may be at a loss as to where to start. This tip covers how you can change the markup display so that only vertical lines are displayed when there are changes.

Multiple Document Users
If you have a group of people working on a single document, you may wonder what tools are available in Word to facilitate the needs of the group. This tip discusses different approaches your group members can take when working on that document.

Pasting Text with Track Changes
Track Changes is a great tool for developing documents. If you want to copy text from one document to another, with tracked changes intact, you'll need the info in this tip.

Printing Documents without Markup
If you have a document with Track Changes turned on, you can accumulate quite a bit of "markup" in it. Here's how you can print the document without that markup showing up.

Printing Only Changed Pages
Turn Track Changes on, and you can easily see where you've made changes throughout a document. If you want to print only those pages on which changes have been made, you are out of luck, however. Here's a way you can get around this limitation, however.

Printing without Track Changes Marks
Turn on Track Changes, and Word will automatically notate where you make edits in your document. Normally these change marks print when you commit your document to hard copy. If you don't want the marks to print, then you'll appreciate the information in this tip.

Protecting Tracked Changes
Track Changes is a great tool for editors and collaborators to use when creating documents. An author, seeking changes from editors, may want to protect a document so that nobody else can accept or reject changes made in the document. This tip explains how that protection can be achieved.

Protecting Your Revisions
Want to protect your documents so that people can't edit them without you knowing about it? One way is to make sure that the document is protected so that only marked revisions can be made. Word makes this easy.

Rejecting Changes In a Document
The Track Changes feature of Word is very powerful, allowing an individual or a team to track exactly what changes are made to a document over time. You may have a scenario where an editor wants to undo someone else's change, but then show that the "undo" was performed. As explained in this tip, such an action goes against the intent of how Track Changes be used.

Removing Dates from Edits
Don't like it when Word displays the date on which a tracked edited was made? You may be out of luck in getting that date display removed.

Select All Changes By a Particular Reviewer
If you are using Word 2002 or Word 2003, and you've been tracking changes in a document, you can display all the changes made by individual editors. This tip shows how easy such a task can be.

Setting Change Bars Manually
A couple of ways you can add change bars to your document.

Setting Change Bars Manually in WordBasic
A couple of ways you can add change bars to your document.

Tracked Changes Notification when Opening
If you have Word configured to show markup on-screen and you look through a document, it is easy to tell where changes have been made. It is a bit more difficult to find just a few changes in a long document, however. In such instances, it may be helpful to get some sort of visual notification, when you open a document, that there are changes in that document. This tip provides a couple of macros you can use to display just such a warning.

Tracked Changes Won't Go Away
Track Changes is a great tool when editing a document, but the ways that it affects your document can sometimes be confusing. If you have changes that don't seem to go away when you think they should, some of the answers could be found in this tip.

Turning Off Change Bars
If Track Changes is turned on, any edits to a document are accompanied by vertical bars that appear to the left or right side of the changed text. If these change bars distract you, make a quick change to the configuration of Word and you can turn them off completely.

Turning Track Changes Off for Selected Areas
Track Changes is a great tool to use so that you can, well, "track" what changes are made during the development of a document. In some parts of your document, however, you don't particularly care if Word keeps track of what is changing. In those instances it would be nice to turn off the feature for selected areas of the document. While Word doesn't allow you to do this, there are some workarounds you can try to achieve the same desired result.

Using Different Colors with Tracked Changes
When changes are made in a document with Track Changes turned on, each author's changes are normally shown in a different color. If you want your changes to show in different colors based on different editing passes, here's how to get the color changes you need.

Using the Reviewing Toolbar
The Reviewing toolbar is a handy location for many of the tools often used by editors when working on a document. Here's an overview of which tools are available and what they do.

Using Track Changes
Track Changes is a valuable Word tool that allows you to automatically mark changes in your document. This is a great boon when you want to see what changes have been made by you or another editor. Using Track Changes is easy, depending on the version of Word you are using.