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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.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Track Changes.docx
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Track Changes - Solution.docx
130.6 KB

Quick reference

Track Changes

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

When to use

Any time an edit change is “optional” and someone must give final approval.  Commonly used in legal offices.

Instructions

Review Ribbon, Tracking & Changes Group
                                 

Track Changes

  1. Turn on Track Changes by clicking the button on the Review ribbon.
  2. Make changes to the ribbon; 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 colours and options:
  6.  When finalizing a document, click the Accept/Reject buttons and the markup lines in the left margin will disappear.
  7. And the last step is to finally turn “off” the Track Changes button so that it will stop all future tracking.
    ON:     OFF:
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  • 00:04 On the Review ribbon we have the tracking section,
  • 00:07 which is possible one of the most confounding features in Microsoft Word.
  • 00:11 But to control it,
  • 00:12 it's actually fairly simple if you understand the basics of what's going on.
  • 00:16 First of all, my Track Changes is not turned on.
  • 00:19 I know it's not turned on because this button right here isn't highlighted.
  • 00:22 So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna just turn it on.
  • 00:24 And you can see now that button is gray, it is on, all right?
  • 00:28 So let's go ahead and make a change.
  • 00:30 So I'm going to wipe out this and I'm gonna type Andy GoSkills.
  • 00:34 Notice what happened off to the left, I get a little red line.
  • 00:37 That tells me nothing.
  • 00:38 I've no idea why that red line showed up.
  • 00:40 So it's because right up here, Simple Markup Is, by default,
  • 00:44 what shows up when you start it.
  • 00:46 But if you choose All Markup on the drop-down arrow,
  • 00:48 now you can see what was there has been crossed out.
  • 00:52 And what is there, the new one that has not yet been accepted and
  • 00:55 approved, is in red, okay?
  • 00:57 So then I can make another change right here.
  • 00:59 I'll just type 123 Green St..
  • 01:02 Now as you can see, the old is crossed out, the new is in red.
  • 01:05 So now the Show Markup, if I wanna show Balloons, Show Revision in Balloons.
  • 01:12 When I click that, up comes a little
  • 01:15 margin over here which will just ruin your day if you don't know how to control that.
  • 01:20 And the best way to control that is basically, turn off the Balloons.
  • 01:23 We don't want to show, we don't want to do that.
  • 01:26 So we'll just do all formatting inline.
  • 01:29 Okay, let's see.
  • 01:30 They have to be accepted.
  • 01:31 Your changes must be accepted.
  • 01:33 That goes hand in hand with tracking and changes is accepting these changes.
  • 01:37 So when I hit the drop-down arrow, Accept and
  • 01:39 Move to Next, Accept All Changes, Accept and Stop Tracking.
  • 01:44 Let's go ahead and accept all changes.
  • 01:46 They've been accepted.
  • 01:47 They all turned black.
  • 01:48 Still showing all markup, but my Track Changes is still on because most people
  • 01:52 when they finish forget to turn this thing off.
  • 01:55 And then it could be another week from now and
  • 01:58 I'm typing your name and this happens all over again.
  • 02:01 And people kind of hit the roof and
  • 02:03 they don't know how to control it cuz no one turned this off.
  • 02:06 All right?
  • 02:07 It's either on all the time or it's off all the time.
  • 02:09 You've got to physically get up there and hit that button.
  • 02:11 All right?
  • 02:12 So I'm going to go ahead and turn off track changes.
  • 02:16 So it's no longer going to track, but I do have to tell it, don't show me any markup.
  • 02:21 Just show me the results.
  • 02:22 Okay, so that's how you basically control it.
  • 02:25 So we track it and we change it.
  • 02:26 Let's not forget this little arrow right here on the corner.
  • 02:29 So when I activate that, we can come in here and change these options.
  • 02:33 And we can change our user name, so if you don't want your name to show up on
  • 02:37 the changes, who authored the change, you can give yourself a nickname if you want.
  • 02:43 The advanced options shows you the different colors.
  • 02:46 I've seen eight different colors before and so many tracked changes on a 15-page
  • 02:51 document, when printed with all the changes ended up being a 40-page document.
  • 02:55 So you can go a little crazy with how many authors and how many colors.
  • 02:59 But if it's going back and forth between offices, we can't avoid that so.
  • 03:02 All right, that's the lesson on track changes.
  • 03:05 Turn it on, turn it off, show no markup and make sure you accept all the changes.
  • 03:10 All right.
  • 03:11 Thank you.

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