Pasting Text with Track Changes

I should point out that works with every version of Word since 2013

Another method is to simply combine documents in Word 2021. The tracked changes will show up in the combined document and it doesn't appear to make a difference if track changes are on or not. I just test a document (test1 with 5 paragraphs generated using -lorem(5,4), copy the entire document into a second file (test2), turned on track changes, and deleted the 4th paragraph in test2. With no tracking in test1 and tracking on in test 2, I then combined the files. The tracked changes show up in the combined document. I do this with document of all sizes up to about 200 page and it works every time.

In the comment i just posted there is an error: the documents i work on are about 200 pages long, not 2000 as indicated. They have around 600 comments in them. Sorry

Your method of using control C, control V does NOT work in office 365 (i.e. the Word version that is current as of Sep 2022). I was careful about having track changes turned off in both the original document and the new document I was copying to. And 'all markup' and 'show deletions/additions was turned on in both.

I have not tried your second method, but will. 2 days ago i tried another method - contol + F3 and control + shift + F3 (the +s are not keystrokes but explanations only) and that worked, i,.e. showing the text with strikeout lining, red coloring, etc. Now, today, that doesn't work either; i got this from a 2017 web article,

So that you know, Microsoft came out with the 365 version of Word around Nov of last year. I work on documents around 2000 pages long with maybe 600 numbered comments (with nothing but an author and a number in the comment) and the redline or new text in tables, paragraphs, figures, etc.. When one of these documents was 1st opened on the new version of Word, it took almost 15 minutes to load; this never went away and was demoed to Microsoft, along with opening the same document on Word 2016 (30 seconds to open, maybe). To make a long story short, after 5 months of dealing with a low level Microsoft Tech, who was trying to work with actual Microsoft developers of Word, they figured out they had fouled up something in Word 365 and issued a fix (i.e. around Mar 2022). The point of this story being, that this new version of Word is buggy (i still have problems in how i can view comments). FYI.

Thanks a lot, your post was a big help.

Thank you!!! This was so easy and saved me a huge amount of work!!

Thanks so much, that was very easy and helpful!

A great help in a hurry: thank you, Allen Wyatt!

Thanks a lot, this was a big help.

Like Andy Gillette - a life saver for me too!!!!!!
Thank you ever so much !!!!

I'd like to just say that I've used this page about a dozen times--total life saver for me and the type of work I do. THANK YOU!

Turning change tracking was the missing ingredient for me, thank you!

The spike method or the other one mentioned in word tips did not work when I tried to retain track changes intact when pasted in a new word document.

I knew I could count on you! You saved me from a huge mess!

For those who might be having trouble, the first time I tried it, I didn't realize that the SOURCE document needs to have track changes off as well as the TARGET document. Once I did that, everything worked just fine (Word 2007).

Echoing the last few commenters. The steps to these simple tasks are often so straightforward yet so elusive, and we can waste so much time searching for them. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Yessss!!! This is the answer! Top notch!

This page and some of your other pages have been life-savers for me, time and again. Thank you from a grateful editor!

You saved my day. Thanks a million!

Lorna: to use the spike on the Mac (Word365) you need to include the Fn key, so

Copy: Fn+Cmd+F3
Place spike: Fn+Shft+Cmd+F3

Anyway that works for me.

This doesn't work. It just deletes the text

I can't make this tip work for Word for Mac 16. I have a section of text in a book that I want to send to a client with track changes showing. I have tried turning off track changes in the source (new) document. But when I paste, the changes aren't there. I didn't turn off changes in the original file, since I want them to show up.

This "spike" business doesn't seem to work at all on my Mac. I tried with both Control and Command plus the F3 key. Nada.

Any advice for me?

I hate having to cut all the preceding and following chapters from a file each time I want to send the edited chapter to my client. Big, slow hassle. There has to be an easier way!

Is it possible to copy text from MSWord with the unaccepted revisions and place in an Excel cell?

We're reviewing multipule document revisions, and are assembeling our concerns about the proposed revisions. We're using a spreadsheet to collect and resolve these concern.

Really useful.. Life saver!

Very useful thanks

Thank you. Love your site!
I agree with Andrew, the real trick is to copy redlined text from a Word document into an Outlook email. Unfortunately for me, Andrew's macro solution is above my skill level. Any advice on that problem for those of us not as smart as Andrew?

Very useful, thanks!

Thank you. You give the best advice! You've helped me out of many jams.

I do this all the time. The real trick, though, is to show the "track changed" text in an email. For this I use a macro to copy the selected text to a scratch document using the method of this tip, I convert the track changes text to manual formatting, and copy the whole thing into the clipboard. Very useful. Here's a macro with guts of the conversion:

<code>
Sub ConvertTrackedChangesToFormattedTextInRange(rng As Range)
' Based on macro by Doug Robbins - Word MVP
' downloaded from http://www.pcreview.co.uk/forums/converting-track-changes-marking-new-document-content-t3827219.html
' A first limitation is that this only works for simple text structures (not moves, etc.)
' A second limitation is that the formatting of the output is fixed as blue double underline
' for insertions and red strikethrough for deletions.

Dim arev As Revision

For Each arev In rng.Revisions
If arev.Type = wdRevisionDelete Then
With arev.Range.Font
.StrikeThrough = True
.Color = wdColorRed
End With
arev.Reject
ElseIf arev.Type = wdRevisionInsert Then
With arev.Range.Font
.Underline = wdUnderlineSingle
.Color = wdColorBlue
End With
arev.Accept
End If
Next arev
End Sub
</code>

Oh jeez, this saved my life. I've been using Word since college and never had issues until the Beast That Is 365...ugh. That Microsoft would decide to make this random change of accepting edits by default when copying is definitely a bug...not a feature. Dang machines are supposed to do what I tell them, not what they think I want to do!!

Tried both ways, none worked. I am on Word 2010.
Tried a few times without success. I am sure I followed the steps correctly.

Works great, some people may need to use the Fn key as well depending on their keyboard I guess.

This has been extremely helpful! With many organizations already shifting to G Suites, this tip in word doc saved me!