How to Deal with Tracked Changes in Word

Tracked Changes in Word shouldn’t fill you with terror.

When you receive an edited file from your editor, your first thoughts might be quite overwhelming.

You’ve spent weeks, months or even years getting your document just right. Or so you thought.

You open up your Word document, and there in front of you is a sea of comments, deletions and additions. It’s enough to make a writer close down the computer and go do something less scary instead.

This is all perfectly normal. Even the best written document will have some changes noted.

But fear not, there’s a way to make the revision task easier – it just involves a few tweaks and a cup of tea (the tea is not essential, but everything is better with a cup of tea).

How to deal with tracked changes:

1. Don’t panic. Be prepared.

When you open up your document, be prepared for a lot of changes. Not every change will have been tracked, (for example, your editor is not likely to have allowed Word to track every deleted extra space, paragraph return or tab) but the more changes, the more cluttered your manuscript will look.

Take a deep breath, take it all in, then be prepared to knuckle down to the job in hand.

2. Change the tracked changes to your own preference.

If you are confident, you can change the tracked changes to look easier to your eye.

We all have a preferred way of working, so it’s perfectly fine to make the changes look the way you want them to. Whatever makes you more comfortable is always best.

When I originally wrote this guide, back in 2017, my preferences were to have additions noted in blue, deletions in grey bubbles, format changes in red bubbles and comments in green bubbles. I felt at the time that this allowed the text to look less cluttered, and any additions and deletions could easily be seen without fighting for space. But, now in 2024, well … I work slightly differently, with the deletions in the body of the text. I might change it up in another seven years. Hmmm. There’s a phrase for that (cue nerdy Marilyn Monroe reference).

I’ll keep screenshots of the old version of Word and the newer one here, as you may find that your version looks slightly different (there’s also a difference between using a PC and a Mac – I use a PC here).

Back then, using Word 2007, one of my documents would look like this:

Now, in Word 365 it looks like this:

If you want to change to your own preferences here’s how you do it.

 I’ll use both Word 2007 and Word 365  below, but your version should be similar.

• First, go to the Review tab.
• Make sure Track Changes is highlighted (if it isn’t, click on it to allow your changes to be tracked, in Word 365 this is called Tracking).
• Make sure the box shows ‘Final Showing Markup’ or ‘All Markup’ to allow you to actually see the changes.

Word 2007:

Word 365:

Then, to change your preferences, click on the little down arrow on the bottom right of the Track Changes box (in newer versions the arrow is in the right-hand corner) and some options should appear. In Word 365 you are taken straight to the ‘Change Tracking Options’ box, but Word 2007 looks like this:

Word 2007:

Click on ‘Change Tracking Options …’ and then you’ll see the following:

Word 365:

To get to the ‘Advanced Options’ in 365, first click on the arrow in the bottom right-hand corner.

Then click on ‘Advanced Options’

And you’ll see the options appear:

Here both versions of Word are pretty much the same and you can alter how the tracked changes will appear. You can see my insertions, here in 2007, are underlines in blue, deletions are strikethroughs in gray, and my formatting is coloured by author, which makes them red, etc. However, I’ve chosen to always show balloons, so the deletions, formatting and comments will appear in the right-hand side margin by clicking ‘Revisions’ in the balloon drop-down menu.

If you prefer to have deletions show in the text (which is better if there are a lot of revisions) just click on ‘Only for comments/formatting’ in the Balloons section, you can see it highlighted in blue in the Track Changes Options box below. With 365 the balloon formatting is in the first ‘Track Changes Options’ box (see the previous images):

You might want to change the deletions to teal (or red) to allow you to easily see where they have occurred in the text, so click on the down arrow on the colour box (it’s highlighted in blue below):

When you hit the OK button you’ll see your preferences have changed:

OK, so now you should have your preferences changed and are ready to review your document.

3. Work through your document.

Once you’re comfortable with what you are seeing, work through the document in the way that feels best for you. You may want to work through it all in one sweep, or you might want to look at the comments first. If you want to do this you can show only certain changes to the document, for example, see only the changes or see only the comments.

Here you’ll see only the comments:

Click on the ‘Show Markup’ box and make sure only ‘Comments’ and ‘Markup Area Highlight’ are selected, or only ‘Comments’ in Word 365. The markup area isn’t mandatory in 2007, but I found it better if this area was coloured (which doesn’t seem to be an option any more).

And here, by deselecting ‘Comments’ and selecting ‘Insertions and Deletions’, the comments disappear and the insertions and deletions are shown:

Work methodically through your document

But remember that your editor has good reasons for every change.

Don’t bother to accept everything as you go along

You can ‘accept all’ at the end, but reject any changes that you have good reason to reject. Keep in mind that any rejections may alter the sentences around them and have a domino effect. To reject a change simply use the ‘Reject’ buttons at the top of the pane (or click on the down arrows for more options), or right-click on the area you want to reject.

Remember though, for example, if you reject the deletion of a capital letter, you will also have to reject the insertion of the lowercase letter!

Work through your manuscript

Now’s the time to work through the document, answer any questions or address any comments, and make sure you are happy with your document.

Usually you can now, if you want to, go back to your editor for one final look through. This is to allow them to make sure your changes are OK and all comments have been addressed. Make sure that YOUR changes have been tracked though so your editor can quickly see what has been changed. (Do make sure that this is how your editor works, and that the final look through is included in your package, some editors may charge extra for this).

4. Finalise your manuscript

Now, finally, when everything is acceptable, you can accept all changes. Go to the ‘Accept’ box in the reviewing pane and click on the little down arrow. Now you will see a few choices, just click on ‘Accept all changes in document’ and this will accept everything.

Word 2007:

Word 365:

You now have a ‘clean’ document:

I hope this quick tutorial has been of some use to you.

Always remember, that while that first view of your edited document can be a shock, it means that you are on your way to producing a quality product. Be proud of your achievements, and look forward to the next step with confidence.

Other articles to help you with Word:

How to set styles in Microsoft Word?

How to delete styles in Microsoft Word