Accepting Only Formatting Changes

Roger edits documents revised by others who use Track Changes. But Roger doesn't care about any of their formatting changes. He wonders if there is a way to accept all formatting changes while leaving the status of all their other edits unchanged.

Accepting only the formatting changes (and leaving all the other changes still waiting your decision) can be done in Word, but the steps required aren't immediately apparent. Here's what you need to do:

1. Display the Review tab of the ribbon.
2. In the Tracking group, click on the Show Markup drop-down list. Word displays a list of categories of changes that it can show.
3. Uncheck anything you want to preserve. In Roger's case, he should make sure that everything except Formatting is unchecked. (That's because Roger only wants to affect the formatting changes and leave everything else alone.)
4. Click the down-arrow under the Accept tool, in the Changes group. Word displays some choices you can make.
5. Choose Accept All Changes Shown. All of the formatting changes are accepted.
6. Again, click the Show Markup drop-down list.
7. Put check marks next to any changes you want displayed on the screen.
8. Process the changes as you normally would.

The key to making this work is in step 5. What you are doing in steps 2 and 3 is making sure that you only display what you want to affect, and then in step 5 you are choosing to accept only what is displayed. When you click the Accept tool, you'll also see the familiar Accept All Changes option, but you should NOT choose it. If you do, then all the changes in the document—whether they are displayed or not—will be accepted.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (9975) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.