Printing without Track Changes Marks

Track Changes is a handy feature to use when editing a Word document. The marks let you know what edits have been made, and are particularly useful if you have multiple editors working on the same document. You may, at times, want to print a document before the changes have been resolved and not have the Track Changes marks show on the printout. You can accomplish this task by following these steps:

1. Choose Print from the File menu. Word displays the Print dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Print dialog box.

2. Change the Print What drop-down list to Document.
3. Click OK.

The printout should not show your Track Changes marks. The marks are only printed if the Print What drop-down list (step 2) is set to Document Showing Markup.

It is important to understand that Word changes the value of this drop-down list, by default, depending on whether there are any tracked changes in your document or not. If there are not, then Document is the default setting for the drop-down. If there are tracked changes (whether you have Track Changes currently on or not) then Document Showing Markup is the default. This is why, if you have tracked changes and you want them not to show in the printout, you must display the Print dialog box instead of just doing a straight printout (using the Print tool) or a Print Preview.

Of course, Track Changes is one of those features that Microsoft has messed around with over the last several versions of Word. Therefore, the above approach may not work in your version of Word. For instance, in Word 97 or Word 2000 you should instead choose Track Changes from the Tools menu and then clear the Highlight Changes in Printed Documents check box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (346) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Printing without Track Changes Marks.