Track changes in MSWord

Viewing or concealing edits
Viewing edits
In the Ribbon’s Review tab, open the Show Markup (Windows) or Markup Options (Mac)
menu:
• Selecting “Comments” lets you switch between displaying and concealing the comments.
• Selecting “Insertions and Deletions” lets you switch between displaying and concealing
inserted and deleted text.
• Selecting “Formatting” lets you switch between displaying and concealing format changes
such as boldface, italics, and changes to paragraph styles.
This menu lets you focus on one or more specific types of change at a time (e.g., only comments,
both comments and inserted and deleted text). Turning off the display of a particular change does
not remove the change from your document; all changes are still present until you accept or
reject them. All this option does is conceal changes you’re not ready to consider right now.
Concealing edits
In the Ribbon’s Review tab, the unlabeled menu that usually starts by displaying “All Markup”
(called the Show menu in older versions of Word) gives you two useful options:
• Select “No Markup” to show the final manuscript that will result if you accept all of the edits.
Again, these edits are still present in the document; Word just doesn’t display them.
• Select “All Markup” to show all of the edits again. 
Accepting or rejecting edits
The easiest way to review the editor's changes is by using the tools provided in the Ribbon’s
Review tab:
• Click the Next Change (right arrow) or Previous Change (left arrow) icons to find the next
or previous edit, respectively.

• Click the Accept (checkmark) button to accept or the Reject (´) button to reject that edit.
• Click the Next Change or Previous Change icons if you don’t want to deal with the change
right now and will review it again later.
If you prefer, you can choose what to do about a given edit using the mouse: click on a change
with the right-hand mouse button (Control+click if your mouse only has one button) to display a
menu of options, and then choose the appropriate option (accept or reject).
If there are many edits, it can take a long time to accept each one individually. Fortunately,
there's a faster way:
• First, review all comments in the document. Make the necessary changes (e.g., insert a
sentence, change a word).
• Next, move through the document one sentence at a time, reviewing each edit. If you agree
with a specific change made by the editor, simply move on to the next edit.
• If you disagree with a change, reject that change (see the next point in this list), but insert a
comment that informs the editor what you did and why. (See the earlier section "Inserting
comments" to learn how to insert your own comments and the section “Replying to and
Resolving Comments” to learn how to reply to or resolve a comment.)
• To reject all of an edit, click the right-hand mouse button (or Control+click if your mouse
only has one button). Both actions display a menu of options for the edited text. Select
Reject Change from this menu. If you only want to reject part of the edit, select the inserted
or deleted text first by dragging the mouse cursor across it. (That is, position the mouse
cursor at the start of the text, hold down the mouse button, and drag the mouse to the end of
the text.) Then right-click or Control-click, and select Reject Change.
• Continue reviewing each edit or comment until you reach the end of the manuscript.
To accept the remaining edits (the ones you agreed with, plus your own changes) in a single step:
• Click the small triangle beside the Accept icon to display a menu of options.
• Select the option Accept All Changes.
If you intend to make any additional changes that you want the editor to review, turn on the track
changes feature (if it isn’t already on) so the editor can easily see what you did. (See the earlier
section "Inserting your own edits" for details.) This is more efficient (faster and less expensive)
than asking the editor to re-read the entire document to find what you did.
© 2019 Geoff Hart (geoff@geoff-hart.com)