Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. 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: Accepting All Formatting Changes.
Graciela has a huge document with many changes that were made with Track Changes turned on. Some of these changes are formatting changes and some of them are of other types, such as textual edits. Graciela would like to accept all the formatting changes but not the other types of changes. She is curious of there is an "accept all" command that will accept only the formatting changes.
It is relatively easy to accomplish this task. Just follow these steps:
If you find yourself getting rid of the formatting changes quite a bit, you can instruct Word to not track formatting changes at all. Follow these steps if you are using Word 2007 or Word 2010:
Figure 1. The Track Changes Options dialog box.
If you are using Word 2013, follow these steps instead:
Figure 2. The Advanced Track Changes Options dialog box.
Now Word won't track any of the formatting changes you make in the document. If you find that the setting is not persistent from one Word session to another, you can create a small macro to run whenever a document is opened. Simply add this single line to the macro:
ActiveDocument.TrackFormatting = False
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (8834) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and 2013. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Accepting All Formatting Changes.
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2018-11-21 10:36:22
Fi
Thank you! This has made my task much easier!
2017-07-05 03:51:04
Mr Didot
clear, concise and effective, thx
2017-06-22 10:53:13
Elle
Ok so I just wowed my colleagues by doing this :D. Thank you!
2017-05-05 08:54:51
MJBailey
This was the MOST helpful site. Quick, clear, step by step instructions. Thank you.
2017-03-03 13:57:12
YR
Life = Saved
Thank you!
2016-10-18 15:08:56
Sidyolly
Thank you so much. Excellent answer!!
2016-01-21 12:50:57
Judy
Hello,
I have an existing word document that I have Tracking change on. I have formatted changes that are linked to a numbered titled and the Accept Format Change option is not available. It shows Accept Change and Reject Change of which neither of them do anything. The text box that shows the changes is stil there. Do you have any idea how to resolve?
2015-11-25 13:12:43
Galina
Excellent tips and clear guidance. thanks a lot! it save a lot of precious time.
2015-11-24 11:19:15
JM
Thanks Allen - you saved me hours here.
J
2015-11-07 06:17:28
Ken Endacott
John Samuel
The following macro will open each document in the directory of the active document, remove all comments and close the document.
Sub BulkRemoveComments()
Dim fl As String
Dim aComment As Comment
Dim mydir As String
mydir = ActiveDocument.Path
fl = Dir(mydir & "" & "*.docx")
Do While fl <> ""
Documents.Open (mydir & "" & fl)
For Each aComment In ActiveDocument.Comments
aComment.Delete
Next aComment
Documents(fl).Close SaveChanges:=wdSaveChanges
fl = Dir()
Loop
End Sub
If you want to also accept Track Change revisions then after the line Next aComment add the line:
If ActiveDocument.Revisions.Count > 0 Then ActiveDocument.Revisions.AcceptAll
2015-11-06 05:54:46
John Samuel
I have about 40-50 Word documents (.docx in Word 2010) all of which have review comments. I want to bulk accept all the comments in all the documents, without having to open the documents at all. Is that possible?
The closest that I have got a solution is to press Alt+R+A+D which is the keyboard shortcut to accept all comments in the document. But this still requires opening each document.
Any help is appreciated :)
2015-10-25 09:43:04
amir
Thank you.
have good time.
2015-10-21 15:52:47
Steve
Greatly appreciated!
2015-09-25 10:03:35
JPS
Thank you! This really saved my bacon!
2015-09-24 14:34:50
jim
regarding the note below that I left. I tried accepting one-at-time which worked, so I tried to accept all displayed changes and now it works. Thanks for your help! :)
2015-09-24 14:30:37
jim
when I do this (and I have done it many times in other documents) there is no affect. The format change indications remain as is.
2015-09-17 15:57:32
Chuck
saved me more time for goofing off!
2015-07-30 10:02:42
Mewa
Thanks a million! :-)
2015-06-12 12:15:30
Jacques
Amazing, thank you very much!
2015-06-05 07:58:14
Mike
Thank you for the tip--it's awesome because about a hundred formatting changes were noted after about a dozen edits to some structured text in the document!
2015-05-12 12:38:05
Vicky
THANK YOU!!! This is a huge timesaver!
2015-04-27 14:54:05
gargi
thank you soo much!!
2015-04-16 07:22:03
Peanut
Wow! That really helped - and explained so clearly and dummy-proofly.
Thank you very much Allen.
2015-04-13 08:34:24
J A
Great tip!
2015-02-11 18:00:56
Sonya
Thank you, this saved me a lot of right-clicking down through a document that had a lot of those pesky formatting changes! I've shared this tip with my colleagues :-)
2014-12-29 03:30:59
Denis
Thanks for such simple, but so useful info!
Because there are a lot of formatting changes occur when you save a document with different languages and table in it.
2014-12-12 05:08:59
GSB
Very useful tip!
2014-11-11 09:54:58
Anita Thomson
I'm trying to accept changes in a document however each time I save, when I reopen it, all the changes are showing up again! What am I doing wong?? HELP!! Thanks, Anita
2014-09-11 11:45:15
Sally
This helped tremendously. Thank you!
2014-09-05 07:28:42
Cathy
That was brilliant. Thanks!
2014-09-01 10:32:32
Sebnem
THANK YOU!
2014-08-13 16:17:34
Andrew Ziem
Thank you for the useful tip :)
2014-07-29 17:57:32
PR
Thanks for this tip - This made things look a bit cleaner while I was giving feedback.
2014-07-17 09:18:07
Faye
Thanks you so much, saves me a lot of time.
2014-06-11 14:37:56
Cara
THANK YOU!!! Accepting all of the formatting changes in this document will make my life so much easier. I knew how to turn it off when you start, but my partners won't take this step for me.
Thanks!!!!
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Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, and 2013. 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: 
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