Today’s post about track changes in Word is contributed by Louis Broome, a manager and writer for Office.com.
Office 2011 for Mac can keep track of the changes made to a Word document, who made them, and when the changes were made. But these changes aren’t tracked until you turn on the Track Changes feature in Word 2011 for Mac; then, you can send the document to others for edits, and their changes are tracked.
![Word For Mac Can Word For Mac Can](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125754572/847107758.png)
To turn Track Changes off, on the Review tab, in the Tracking group, click the Track Changes button (the paper & pencil with the healthy orange glow, pictured below). Here’s the relevant piece of Word real estate:
If your document contains tracked changes, like this:
and you want to get rid of them, on the Review tab, in the Changes group, you can Accept or Reject each change or All Changes in Document:
Tracked changes can be hidden, which might or might not be a good thing. Either way, take a moment to become familiar with the Display for Review drop-down list and its four options:
Final: Show Markup shows all tracked changes.
Final hides tracked changes to show the document with all proposed changes included.
Original: Show Markup shows the original text with tracked changes and comments.
Original shows the document before any changes were made.
Final hides tracked changes to show the document with all proposed changes included.
Original: Show Markup shows the original text with tracked changes and comments.
Original shows the document before any changes were made.
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If your Track Changes needs are more sophisticated than the above, choose from this list of the Top 5 Track Changes-related videos, articles, and training courses on Office.com/support:
- This brief article on how to Turn Track Changes on or off includes a cool tip: You can customize the status bar to add an indicator that tells you when Track Changes is on or off (the Word 2007 version is here).
- If all you want to do is turn off Track Changes, watch this video.
- Demo: Remove tracked changes from Word 2007 documents shows you how to permanently remove revision marks in a Word 2007 document.
- Revise documents with Track Changes and Comments in Word 2007, a training course, will teach you how to review, accept, reject, and hide tracked changes in Word 2007, and along the way you get to practice.
- Track changes while you editcovers the basics of how to track changes in Word 2007 while you edit, and how to change the way that markup is displayed (the Word 2003 article is here).
Bonus track (changes):
Remove tracked changes and comments from a documentshows how to ensure that track changes and comments are not left in your Word 2007 documents when you distribute them.
--Louis Broome
Kathryn is experiencing a problem related to Word's Track Changes feature. It seems that when a document has tracked changes, and those changes are eventually all accepted, they don't really go away. As a final step, she changes the view of the document to 'Final' and saves it, but when the document is next opened, it has reverted to 'Final Showing Markup'—and all the changes are back again.
Here is the way that Track Changes is supposed to work in Word. When you turn it on, any edits you make are noted in the document as 'markup.' This markup is supposed to be visible on the screen, provided you are viewing the document as 'Final Showing Markup.' You can either temporarily hide the markup (change the view to 'Final'), or you can get rid of the markup by resolving the changes (accept or reject them). If all of the changes are resolved, then there should be no difference between the two views ('Final Showing Markup' and 'Final') because there is no longer any markup to show.
With that understanding, if you go through a document and resolve all the changes, there should be no need to change the view to 'Final' as the only reason to use that view is to temporarily hide changes. Yet, there are no changes left because you've resolved them all. The only reason to switch the view to 'Final' is if you haven't resolved all the changes.
So, there are two possibilities in Kathryn's case. If the changes have not truly been resolved (individually or collectively accepted or rejected), then the problem is related to the view changing from 'Final' to 'Final Showing Markup' when the document is reopened. If this is the problem, then it is probably a simple fix. Follow these steps:
- Display the Word Options dialog box. (In Word 2007 click the Office button and then click Word Options. In Word 2010 or a later version, display the File tab of the ribbon and then click Options.)
- Click the Trust Center option at the left of the dialog box.
- Click the Trust Center Settings button. Word displays the Trust Center dialog box.
- Click Privacy Options at the left of the dialog box. (See Figure 1.)
- Clear the Make Hidden Markup Visible when Opening or Saving check box.
- Click OK.
Figure 1. The Privacy Options of the Security Center dialog box.
It should probably go without saying, that while you can change the privacy options on your system, you can't change them on someone else's system. Thus, if your document has hidden markup, sending the document to someone else will cause that markup to be visible when they open it on their system. (Assuming, of course, that they haven't made the same change to their privacy settings.)
The second possibility in Kathryn's case is that the changes have truly been resolved, but that the document is being overwritten by an older version of the document. This could happen in a networked environment—perhaps two people have copies of the document and are essentially working on them at the same time. One person gets done editing her copy, resolving all the changes, and then puts it into a network drive for the rest of the office to use. The second person works on his copy but doesn't resolve all the changes. When done (with unresolved changes), the document is copied to the network drive, overwriting the 'more done' copy that was stored there before.
If this is what is happening, the solution is to make sure that each person uses a new document name before copying his or her copy to the network drive. This will avoid any overwriting that may be occurring.