One of the Word features commonly used by editors is the Track Changes feature. You may have need, from time to time, to copy text from one document to another and retain the change marks in the text being copied. For instance, if the text in the source document has some words struck through and some others highlighted as inserts, you may want the text to appear the same way in the target document. Getting the desired results is not a matter of simply cutting and pasting, though.
If you are using Word 97, there is a "bug" in the software that doesn't allow you to copy and paste properly when the text includes tracked changes. The way around this problem is to follow these steps:
That's it. You need to delete the bookmark (steps 10 and 11) because Word copies the bookmark name from the source document, along with the bookmarked text, and the change notations are in place. In addition, the bookmarked text in the source file is still there; it has not been deleted.
If you are using a later version of Word, the Word 97 "bug" has been fixed, but you still need to follow some explicit steps to get the desired results:
Another handy way to copy the text is to use the spike. Word users are so familiar with using the Clipboard to cut, copy, and paste information that we often forget about the spike. This is an area of Word that acts like a secondary Clipboard, with some significant differences. (You can learn more about the spike in other issues of WordTips or in Word's online Help.) To use the spike to copy and paste text with Track Changes markings intact, follow these steps:
That's it!
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1783) 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: Pasting Text with Track Changes.
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2017-05-18 08:44:43
Thank you! Saved me from hours of frustration!
2017-03-02 10:54:00
Tim
Hello,
This feature or steps that are described do not allow a table that is created in one document with track changes to be pasted into another document and retain the track changes. Is there a workaround for this?
Thank you,
User Tim
2017-01-10 10:53:56
Will
Thank you! Worked for Word 2013 and was a great time saver!
2016-11-12 09:34:38
Karen Loeb
I am a professor editing papers. I need to copy the entire document and put it on a course page on Blackboard. If I use the select key in editing and use select all, it omits the tracked comments. If I manually save the document by selecting the entire document, it will save the comments, but this is cumbersome.
2016-10-03 13:00:17
user
Thank you very much!! Saved me from throwing both my screens and my computer through the window!!
2016-05-19 10:44:35
Karen Washington
This tip was excellent. A co-worker and I was just working on a document (i.e., I worked in a local copy and she worked on the correct version). We were working in two (2) documents (i.e., grabbing information from a blackline and then implementing it into the regular word document) and was wondering how to take my changes and implement them back into her version. I googled the information first and they it brought me to this site. Thank goodness you guys had the right information. Thanks again.
2015-11-05 04:16:18
Paul
Great tip, Allen - thanks! (I had tried countless other suggestions that didn't work but the spike did the trick!)
Any ideas on how to use this for an entire table containing tracked changes? In Word 2010, the spike only cuts the first selected cell when you press [Ctrl+F3] (which is still better than nothing, but would be great if there were some way to cut the entire table to the spike...)
2015-10-09 16:33:22
Jo
This is great. The Spike feature works exactly as advertised. Thank you SOOOOOOOOO much. A huge time (and sanity) saver!
2015-10-06 20:20:00
was sooooooo helpful (the spike), worked like magic
2015-09-15 15:38:54
Kim
THANKS! You just saved me from ripping my hair out!
2015-08-19 10:19:01
kaela greenstien
I am trying to copy + paste text from google docs to wordpress and I want the "track changes" to be visible (ie. see all the cross-outs). Any tips? Thanks!
2015-08-02 13:54:31
R Reynolds
This just saved me a couple of hours work, thanks. (I didn't realise you had to turn off track changes in the source document as well as the target one).
2015-06-25 06:43:10
Visak
Thanks very much. Got my problem solved in a jiffy!
2015-06-23 18:39:57
Stephen
The spike really works!!!!
I never knew about it and it completely saved my day when trying to copy/paste track changes from one document to another.
Huzzah!
2015-01-31 00:33:21
DR
Thank you so much. This was most helpful. I didn't realize when copying you needed to turn off track changes on the source and not just destination.
2014-11-04 13:45:54
Tina
how do you paste SPIKE (from Word) in an excel file???
2013-03-26 16:53:00
Jill
Awesome tip about the spike! It worked like a charm. Thanks
2012-02-09 10:02:20
AJ
Dear Allan
I have tried the above but instead of getting track changes apparent in the target document, I get all the text (ie the text i've deleted and the text i've added) all appearing as final.
Note that the donor document was converted into Open Office and the track changes were made there, before converting back to Word 2003-2007.
2011-12-28 02:19:31
Inamullah Khan
It was a good tip which resolved my problem. Thanks for making it public.
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