Word Q & A: Is the change tracking off?
This is a true story:
I'm riding my bike home from work. It's a pretty long ride—almost 18 miles. I'm about a third of the way into it, past the first big intersection and pedaling along the shoulder up a slight grade when my cell phone rings. It's my husband.
"How do I turn those change marks off?"
Traffic is whizzing by, so I pull over to where I'm a little safer and get off my bike.
This is a common customer question. In Office, we've answered it many times—and we now know that it's still confusing for people.
I told him how to find the commands so that he can turn the tracked changes off. (If you're using Word 2007, click the Review tab, and then click Track Changes.)
"They're still there."
Cars were speeding by.
"Yep." Then I explained how clicking Track Changes means that no new changes will be marked in the document—but any changes he had already made would keep their revision marks. To get rid of all the revision marks in the document, he needed to accept them or reject them. (In Word 2007, those commands are also on the Review tab.)
Next, I told him about how he could click Accept All if he was sure he liked his document the way it was.
"Thanks!" He went back to work, and I got back on my bike—with some nagging in the back of my mind.
Like I said, it's a common customer question: "How do you turn track changes off?" And more times than not, people really want to know how to get rid of all the markup in their document. Turn it off, make it stop, and make it go away.
People also want to know how to prevent the changes that seem to have disappeared from reappearing (like some evil magic) when they open the document again. They especially want to prevent this is if someone else—perhaps a potential employer—is opening the document.
The answer is the same: You have to accept or reject all the changes. You can review them one at a time. Or you can use the Accept All or Reject All commands. Or, in Word 2007, you can use Document Inspector to remove all kinds of information—revision marks included.
We've talked about this in the following ways:
· Show or hide comments or tracked changes
· Turn on or off change tracking
· Get rid of tracked changes, once and for all
· Demo: Use tracked changes and comments in your Word 2007 documents
· Demo: Remove tracked changes from Word 2007 documents
· Inspect documents for hidden data and personal information
My question for you: What do you think is the best way to explain tracked changes and how to get rid of them when you're ready to move on?
We want to hear from you.
-Joannie Stangeland
