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Track Changes

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About this lesson

Track changes will show which person made which changes in a document.

Exercise files

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Track Changes - Exercise.docx
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Quick reference

Track Changes

Track changes will show which person made which changes in a document.

When to use

Use any time an edit is optional and someone must give final approval. Commonly used for contract documents and often in legal offices.

Instructions

Review Ribbon, Tracking & Changes Group

A picture containing tableDescription automatically generated

Track Changes

  1. Turn on Track Changes by clicking the Track Changes button on the Review ribbon.
  2. Make changes to the document; observe the marks on the screen. Change how many markups you see by switching “Simple Markup” to “All Markup”.
  3. To view the changes in a pane rather than on the actual document screen, click Reviewing Pane and choose Vertical or Horizontal.
  4. Click the Dialogue Box operator on the Tracking group
  5. Make any changes, then click “Advanced Options” to change the markup colors and options:


 

  1.  When finalizing a document, click the Accept/Reject buttons and the markup lines in the left margin will disappear.
  2. The last step is to turn off the Track Changes button so that it will stop all future tracking.
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  • 00:04 Under the Review ribbon over on the right-hand side,
  • 00:07 is a process called Tracking where we track changes.
  • 00:10 Well, this is one of the most confusing and
  • 00:12 confounding things about Microsoft Word and
  • 00:14 it frustrates a lot of people because they don't know the other side of it.
  • 00:18 Once you track changes, those changes must be accepted or deleted.
  • 00:24 If they're never accepted or deleted, they will forever show on this document and
  • 00:29 that's what makes people a little crazy.
  • 00:31 The tracking and the changes go hand in hand.
  • 00:35 Okay, let's go ahead and make some changes and show you how to do this.
  • 00:39 On the Tracking group, notice we have a Tracking Changes with a drop down arrow.
  • 00:43 The top button will actually activate the Track Changes.
  • 00:46 Notice the tooltip says Ctrl Shift E.
  • 00:49 As soon as I activate Track Changes, whatever I do next will be marked.
  • 00:54 Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and click Track Changes.
  • 00:57 Notice a couple of things happen.
  • 00:59 This immediately switched to All Markup, and
  • 01:02 suddenly my Show Comments lit up as well.
  • 01:05 Let's go down here.
  • 01:06 I will retype, instead of my I'll re type sender.
  • 01:10 It chose the new word with red underline, the previous words crossed out and
  • 01:14 have a little gray mark in the left hand side.
  • 01:16 I'll change the address.
  • 01:22 The new words are underline, previous words crossed out, gray mark.
  • 01:26 Let's change one more.
  • 01:30 Okay, that's enough for the example.
  • 01:33 The way to finish this, of course, is to come over to the Accept button,
  • 01:38 Accept and Move to Next, Accept This Change, Accept All Changes, or
  • 01:43 the creme de la creme, Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking.
  • 01:47 You see, that's another problem.
  • 01:48 Once tracking is on, oftentimes people forget to get up there and turn it off.
  • 01:54 Well, at this point, if this is a long document we're tracking a bunch of
  • 01:58 changes, it gets a little confusing seeing the cross outs and the new ones and
  • 02:02 everything in red.
  • 02:03 So, under this option where it says All Markup,
  • 02:06 I can click the drop down arrow and choose Simple Markup.
  • 02:09 Now, I have got bright red lines in the margin, but
  • 02:13 at least I can just see the new words.
  • 02:15 Hit the drop down again choose No Markup.
  • 02:18 Okay, now it looks like it's finished, doesn't it?
  • 02:21 Except that that Track Changes is still lit up so I know that's on.
  • 02:25 Let's hit this one more time.
  • 02:26 Check this one out, Original.
  • 02:29 You can click Original and click No Markup and
  • 02:33 you can see the original compared to the new one.
  • 02:36 I'm going to change this back to Simple Markup because I like to
  • 02:39 know that there's actually tracking turned on and
  • 02:42 these red lines in the margin is always my indicator that tracking is on right now.
  • 02:46 Before we finish this I want to show you a couple more things.
  • 02:49 I want to show you how to see the markups in balloons which will make you
  • 02:54 a little crazy.
  • 02:55 But notice, I've got Balloons checked, Show Revisions in Balloons but
  • 02:59 I'm not seeing anything different because it is still on Simple Markup.
  • 03:02 So I hit the dropdown, choose All Markup, and now we have a brand new panel with
  • 03:07 all of the markups on a separate column and all of these lines on the screen.
  • 03:12 And a lot of people get into this mode and then don't know how to turn it off.
  • 03:16 It's just a matter of getting into the Tracking and clicking the dropdowns,
  • 03:21 finding every possible solution, and now the result is Show All Revisions inline.
  • 03:27 That's how to turn off the balloons.
  • 03:29 Notice we also have a Reviewing Pane.
  • 03:32 When I turn that on, look at the left-hand side, brand new panel right over there.
  • 03:36 And I've got a drop-down arrow as well, showing Review Pane Vertical or
  • 03:41 Review Pane Horizontal.
  • 03:42 I prefer the vertical.
  • 03:46 And then when we're done with that, we can turn that off as well.
  • 03:49 Okay, there's a way to actually change the font color for everyone that authors or
  • 03:54 edits this.
  • 03:55 On the dialog box operator in the corner of the Tracking, open that up, and
  • 03:59 as you can see, we can show Ink, Insertions, Deletions, Formatting,
  • 04:04 Balloons, Reviewing Pane, or Advanced Options.
  • 04:07 And this is where we can change color by author.
  • 04:11 So every person who's going to author this will have a certain color code.
  • 04:15 I once saw a document where the final printout was only 15 pages black and
  • 04:19 white, but they showed all the tracking changes and sent it to the printer and
  • 04:23 it was a 40 page document.
  • 04:25 There were that many authors in it, it was a little confusing.
  • 04:29 I'll hit Cancel on this and Cancel on this.
  • 04:31 All right, well, I already gave it away in the beginning.
  • 04:33 How do we finish this?
  • 04:34 We must accept or delete the changes.
  • 04:38 So I can hit the drop down, Reject and Move to Next, Reject Change,
  • 04:42 Reject All Changes, Reject All Changes and Stop Tracking.
  • 04:46 I prefer to accept.
  • 04:48 I'm going to hit the drop down and come right down to Accept All the Changes,
  • 04:53 Stop the Tracking, click.
  • 04:54 The Tracking button went off on its own.
  • 04:57 The All Markup is right here and notice there is no markup showing.
  • 05:01 So that's the trick folks.
  • 05:03 When you're doing tracking there's two sides of the story.
  • 05:05 Turn it on, but then accept everything and turn it off.

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