Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Examining Tracked Changes in a Macro.

Examining Tracked Changes in a Macro

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 24, 2025)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

If you need to develop a macro to process a document in which changes have been tracked (using the Track Changes feature), you may wonder how you can determine the number of changes in the document and how you can look at each of the changes, programmatically. It isn't that tough to do if you remember that the changes are organized when using the Revisions collection. This means that you can determine the number of changes using this code:

iNumChanges = ActiveDocument.Revisions.Count

Just like any other collection, you can step through each member of the Revisions collection and figure out various information about the changes represented in each particular member. While the details of what properties and methods belong to the Revisions collection is much too voluminous for this tip, you can determine the type of each change by looking at the Type property, in this manner:

vChange = ActiveDocument.Revisions(1).Type

At this point, vChange will be equal to a revision type that Word tracks. The actual number or revision types depend on the version of Word you are using, but these are the potential values and the built-in enumeration names for the revision types:

Value		Enumeration
0		wdNoRevision
1		wdRevisionInsert
2		wdRevisionDelete
3		wdRevisionProperty
4		wdRevisionParagraphNumber
5		wdRevisionDisplayField
6		wdRevisionReconcile
7		wdRevisionConflict
8		wdRevisionStyle
9		wdRevisionReplace
10		wdRevisionParagraphProperty
11		wdRevisionTableProperty
12		wdRevisionSectionProperty
13		wdRevisionStyleDefinition
14		wdRevisionMovedFrom
15		wdRevisionMovedTo
16		wdRevisionCellInsertion
17		wdRevisionCellDeletion
18		wdRevisionCellMerge
20		wdRevisionConflictInsert
21		wdRevisionConflictDelete

Additional information can be found in Word's Help system or by searching the Internet for the phrase "revisions collection". Information about the enumerations can be found at this Microsoft site:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/Word.WdRevisionType

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8922) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Examining Tracked Changes in a Macro.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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