How to Track Changes in Word? A Step-by-Step Guide
(Note: This guide on how to track changes in Word is suitable for all MS Word versions including Office 365)
Imagine this: You are preparing a report for an upcoming event. You share the report’s Word document with your team members since it involves a little bit of collaboration.
However, to your surprise, you notice that they have unnecessarily changed a lot of the document’s content. Now, how will you keep track of the changes that were made in the article and restore the original version?
Don’t worry! We have got you covered. In this guide, I will show you how to track changes in Microsoft Word and different ways to see the changes made to the document.
How to Track Changes in Word?
In Word, you can easily track the changes made by you or others. As the document owner, you can also accept or reject the changes made by others.
To do this, you need to first turn on the Track Changes feature. It is very simple. Let us see how to do this.
- Open any Word document and click on tbe Review tab.
- Go to the Tracking section and click on Track Changes. Or, you can use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+E) to start tracking the changes.
Once the Track Changes feature is enabled, every change made by you or others will be tracked by Word.
By default, the changes you make will have a red margin on the left. This margin color will be different for different authors who make changes to the document.
Turn off Tracking Changes
If you don’t want to track the changes anymore, you can easily turn it off.
Go to Review > Tracking and click on Track Changes again. Or, you can use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+E) to disable it.
Once you have switched off track changes, the word does not track any changes that are made. However, the previously made changes will be recorded and visible.
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How to See the Changes Made in a Document?
There are different ways to see the changes made in a document. You can use any one of them based on your preferences. Let us see them one by one.
Comments
As a writer or an editor, you can leave comments to let others know about the change made, or about the change you want them to make.
To add comments to the document, select the text you want to add a comment on and click on Add Comment.
Now, type in the comment inside the comments box.
Some users prefer to add comments to indicate changes made in a document.
You can click on “Show Comments” to toggle on or off the visibility of the comments section. Also, you can delete or navigate between comments by clicking on Delete, Previous or Next buttons respectively.
Markup
There 4 ways to see the changes made to the document by selecting any one option from the Markup dropdown.
- Simple Markup
The simple markup points out the changes with a red margin towards the left side of the document. It does not give much detail about the changes. It just points out the places where the changes are made
- All Markup
To activate this, click on the Simple Markup drop-down and choose All Markup. It gives a detailed description of the changes. It shows all the changes made, including comments, and other details like font style and size. It also indicates newly added text with an underline and deleted text with a strikethrough.
- No Markup
To activate this, click on the Simple Markup dropdown and choose No Markup. Instead of indicating the places that changed or the details of the changes, No Markup simply displays the latest version with all the changes incorporated into the document. That is, it shows how the document would look after the changes are made.
- Original
The last drop-down option, the Original Markup shows the original format of the document before the Track Changes feature was switched on and changes were made. You can use this to restore the original version of the document, in case of an inadvertent error.
Show Markup
In any document, there will definitely be more than one type of change/editing. However, you may be interested only in certain types of changes. How can you track only certain kinds of changes in Word?
You can choose to see any one or more types of change made by selecting them in the Show Markup dropdown.
Here, you can toggle on or off to view the comments, formatting, insertions and deletions. Additionally, you can choose the options from the balloons to show the revisions inline or separately.
Moreover, you can also see the changes made by specific people using the show markup drop down and selecting the Specific People option.
Reviewing Pane
If you are an editor, or if the article has just come back from the editor, you might want to see the changes in a detailed format. The Review Pane helps you see the changes in a list view.
It provides details like the inserted text, the format of the text, the comments, and the deleted text (if any).
To see the detailed review window, just click on the Review Pane in the Review tab and choose Reviewing Pane Horizontal/Vertical. This opens up a dialog box and shows you the details of the changes, as shown below.
You can also place the Review Pane in a horizontal or vertical position based on your preference.
How to Accept/Reject Changes in Word?
Word doesn’t stop at keeping track of the changes made by others. It also gives you the liberty to accept or reject the changes made in the document.
To accept or reject the changes, click on the Review tab and click on Accept in the Changes section.
You can accept all the changes at once, or accept the changes one by one by clicking on the drop-down and choosing Accept All Changes.
In the same way, you can also reject any changes made to the document. You can reject all the changes at once, or reject the changes one by one by clicking on the drop-down and choosing Reject All Changes.
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Closing Thoughts
In this guide, we saw how to track changes in Word, the easy way. When you share your documents with others, tracking changes provide a fool-proof method to avoid inadvertent errors. We hope you found this helpful.
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Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
