Word has a powerful tool that allows you to keep track of changes as they are made, which is particularly useful when more than one person works on the same document. You can adjust how Word tracks and displays changes easily by following the tips in these articles.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Track Changes' topic. Click the article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

   Accept All Changes by a Particular Reviewer
The Track Changes feature in Word allows you and other editors to easily collaborate on the development of a document. If you want to accept all the changes made by one particular editor, follow the steps in this tip.

   Accepting All Deletions in a Document
When you use Track Changes in a document, it is easy to amass quite a few edits that you need to accept of reject. If you need a quick way to accept all changes of a certain type (such as deletions), the short macro in this tip will do the trick.

   Accepting All Formatting Changes
Tired of wading through a bunch of formatting changes when you have Track Changes turned on? Here's how to accept all those formatting changes so you can get to the other, more substantive changes.

   Accepting Only Formatting Changes
When you use Track Changes in a document, Word marks everything that changes. (Makes sense, huh?) If an editor makes a lot of formatting changes, that can clutter up the important stuff you want to review. Here's how to accept just those formatting changes so you can remove the clutter.

   Changing How Changes are Noted in Word
Do you want to modify how Word marks changes in your document? It's easy to do, if you know where to look.

   Changing Revision Bar Thickness
Ever wonder how to customize the way the Track Changes feature displays revision bars at the side of changed material? This tip explains what you can and can't change.

   Consolidating Changes under a Single User
When using Track Changes, you may want to have your edits appear to be those of a different user. Here's how to fool Word into thinking you are someone else.

   Counting Changed Words
Track Changes is a handy tool for those who need to see how a document changes over time. If you have a long document with lots of changes, you may want to know how many words in the document were changed due to insertions and deletions. Here's how to get the information you want.

   Deleting Table Columns with Track Changes Turned On
If you are editing a document with Track Changes turned on, Word won't let you delete a column in a table and have it marked as a change. There are ways around this problem, which are discussed in this tip.

   Disabling Track Changes Completely
Have you ever had problems with a document because you accidentally pressed a keyboard shortcut? The good news is that you can disable individual shortcuts. Here's how.

   Displaying Edits by Date
Track Changes is a great tool; it allows you to see what changes were made in a document and then determine whether you want to accept those changes or not. It could be very helpful to view changes by the date on which they were made. This tip discusses how you can view changes in this manner.

   Examining Tracked Changes in a Macro
The Track Changes feature in Word is very handy when you need to see what edits are made to a document. Using a macro, you can even access the changes to see what they are. Here's how to get at the most elemental of the change information.

   Finding Changes Made by Two People
The Track Changes feature in Word can be very helpful when multiple people are working on a document. What if you want to find changes, though, made by two people to the same text? Word doesn't make this particularly easy, and there may be no good solution to the problem.

   Getting a Change and Comment Count by Author
Track Changes can be a great tool when you have multiple editors working on a document. If you want to know the names of the editors and how many changes each editor made, then you'll need to resort to using a macro to discover the stats.

   Getting a Warning for Markup
Many people, when collaborating on a document with others, use the Track Changes feature to show the effects of their editing. When printing your document, you may not want Word to include these changes in the printout. You can instruct the program to warn you if you try to print and there are any tracked changes or comments in the document.

   Getting Rid of Markup
Word includes editing tools that allow you to track what changes you've made in a document. Making the tracked changes go away can be a bit confusing unless you know how Word deals with those changes. Here's a brief overview of what you need to know.

   Graphics Marked as Changed when Comparing Documents
The tools on the Review tab of the ribbon allow you to do all sorts of markup and comparisons of documents. When comparing documents, you may notice that Word marks graphics as changed, even if they aren't. There may, unfortunately, be no easy way around this problem.

   Hiding Formatting Changes in Track Changes
Word can easily (and handily) keep track of changes you make in your document. You may not want all your changes tracked, however. For instance, you may not want Word to keep track of changes you make to your formatting. Here's how to adjust what Word tracks.

   Locking Track Changes On
Track Changes is a powerful tool to help you know what has been changed in a document. You may want to make sure that others don't turn off Track Changes in a document you are working with. This tip shows how you can lock Track Changes so that only you can turn it off.

   Making Simple Markup the Default for Track Changes
Word allows you to view any tracked changes in your documents in a variety of ways. Here's how you can make one of those ways the default in your documents.

   Making Sure Changes and Comments are Anonymous
When using Track Changes, Word normally notes the originator of a particular comment or change. This information can then be displayed so that other readers can know who did what. If you want comments and changes to be anonymous, then there are a couple of things you can do, as described in this tip.

   Making Word Stop at the End of a Document when Reviewing Changes
The Track Changes tool is a great help when you want to see what edits have been made to a document. When you review those changes to resolve them, how you interact with Word can have a bearing on how those changes are displayed. This tip explains how this review process works.

   Noting Moved Words and Phrases in Markup
The Track Changes tool can be very helpful in keeping track of the edits in a document. If you want to track when you move words and phrases, however, you may be out of luck. This tip presents one possible workaround that may help.

   Pasting Text with Track Changes
Track Changes is a great tool for developing documents. If you want to copy text from one document to another, with tracked changes intact, you'll need the info in this tip.

   Printing Documents without Markup
If you have a document with Track Changes turned on, you can accumulate quite a bit of "markup" in it. Here's how you can print the document without that markup showing up.

   Printing without Track Changes Marks
If your document has a lot of markup visible in it, you may want to print a copy of the document that doesn't reflect those changes. Here's how to get the clean output you need.

   Producing Cleaner Markup
Sometimes it seems that Word is overly aggressive in what it shows in its markup when you have Track Changes turned on. This tip looks at just one small way you can change what is included in the markup.

   Protecting Tracked Changes
Track Changes is a great tool for editors and collaborators to use when creating documents. An author, seeking changes from editors, may want to protect a document so that nobody else can accept or reject changes made in the document. This tip explains how that protection can be achieved.

   Protecting Your Revisions
Want to protect your documents so that people can't edit them without you knowing about it? One way is to make sure that the document is protected so that only marked revisions can be made. Word makes this easy.

   Rejecting Changes in a Document
When a group of people edits a document with Track Changes turned on, it can be tempting for one of the editors to use the "reject change" option to undo an edit by a previous individual. Doing so, however, makes it harder to see what editors actually changed. Here's how (and why) you should use the tools differently.

   Resolving Tracked Changes in Footnotes or Endnotes
Track Changes is a great tool that can aid in developing a document. If you have footnotes or endnotes in a document that uses Track Changes, you may be wondering how you can accept (or reject) just the changes in those notes. Here's how.

   Setting Default Options for Track Changes
The Track changes feature in Word is a great help in editing documents, particularly if you are working with others or your edits need to be reviewed by others. Word provides a way to modify how your changes are noted in a document, and Word should always retain those modifications. Here's what to do if your modification of the Track Changes settings are not retained.

   Showing Only Added Text with Track Changes
Do you want to change how Track Changes displays the markup in your document? Here's how you can completely hide deleted text so that only your added text shows up.

   Specifying How Changes are Marked
If you want to configure how Word displays changes in your document, you may be at a loss as to where to start. This tip covers how you can change the markup display so that only vertical lines are displayed when there are changes.

   Stopping Automatic Changes from Being Tracked
Track Changes is a great feature for keeping track of what gets changed in a document. There are some things (such as field results) that Word changes automatically. This can play havoc with what is shown by Track Changes. Here's why that occurs and what you can do about it.

   Struggling with New Changes to Track Changes
In the latest versions of Microsoft 365, the company has introduced an entirely new way to deal with markup comments. This change is frustrating to many people who wonder if there is a way to handle comments as they have historically been handled in Word.

   Track Changes Thinks the Editor Has Changed
Track changes is a great feature to use when you want to show what has changed in a document. Word should note which editor made each change, but sometimes this portion of the feature can get messed up. Here's what you can do to fix this problem.

   Tracked Changes Notification when Opening
If you have Word configured to show markup on-screen and you look through a document, it is easy to tell where changes have been made. It is a bit more difficult to find just a few changes in a long document, however. In such instances, it may be helpful to get some sort of visual notification, when you open a document, that there are changes in that document. This tip provides a couple of macros you can use to display just such a warning.

   Tracked Changes Won't Go Away
Track Changes is a great tool when editing a document, but the ways that it affects your document can sometimes be confusing. If you have changes that don't seem to go away when you think they should, some of the answers could be found in this tip.

   Turning Off Track Changes Change Bars
Word includes a feature that allows you to track changes made to a document. One of the ways in which Word marks your changes on a document is to include a change bar at the side of a line in which a change was made.

   Turning Track Changes Off for Selected Areas
Track Changes is a great tool to use so that you can, well, "track" what changes are made during the development of a document. In some parts of your document, however, you don't particularly care if Word keeps track of what is changing. In those instances it would be nice to turn off the feature for selected areas of the document. While Word doesn't allow you to do this, there are some workarounds you can try to achieve the same desired result.

   Useable Printed Pages with Markup
When you create documents that rely on markup (tracked changes and comments), getting usable printed output that includes the markup can be challenging. This tip looks at some ideas that can help you get what you need.

   Using Different Colors with Tracked Changes
When changes are made in a document with Track Changes turned on, each author's changes are normally shown in a different color. If you want your changes to show in different colors based on different editing passes, here's how to get the color changes you need.

   Using Track Changes
Track Changes is a valuable Word tool that allows you to automatically mark changes in your document. This is a great boon when you want to see what changes have been made by you or another editor.

   Word Tracks Changes to Changes
When you have Track Changes turned on for a document, Word remembers which editor made which changes. If this behavior seems to go awry, it could be for reasons discussed in this tip.