How to Remove Tracked Changes

Track Changes is a feature in word processing programs, like Microsoft Word 2007, that shows and highlights the changes made to an original document. One benefit of this tool is that it allows multiple people to collaborate on a document. Removing the tracked changes can be accomplished by either changing the view of the document, for an overview, or by reviewing the changes and accepting or rejecting each one.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer with Microsoft Word 2007 Microsoft Word document with changes tracked

1. Open Microsoft Word 2007 and the document with tracked changes (also known as "redlining").

2. 
    

   Click the "Review" tab. Notice that "Track Changes" is highlighted and displayed by default in the edited document. According to Microsoft, this is to prevent the inadvertent distribution of documents with visible edits still in them.

3. 
    

   Look in the "Tracked Changes" section of the "Review" tab. Click the arrow next to "Final Showing Markup." Select "Final" to see the final version of the document with the tracked changes integrated, but not highlighted. Select "Original" to see the version of the document before the tracked changes. Note that even though the edits are completely hidden from view, this does not remove the tracked changes from the document!

4. 
    

   Accept or reject the tracked changes to change the text permanently. This can be done individually for each change by clicking "Accept" or "Reject" in the "Changes" area of the review tab. If you hover the mouse over any given visible edit, you can also right-click to bring up a mini menu with these same options. You can also choose to accept or reject all changes in a document by clicking on the arrow in the "Accept" or "Reject" buttons and selecting the appropriate menu item.

5. Save the document. Once you review the visible edits, and all the tracked changes have been accepted or rejected, your saved document will not have any tracked changes showing. It will be a clean, final document.

Tips & Warnings

• Reviewing a long, or complex, document can be time-consuming. Once you begin to review changes, save a copy of the document, using the "Save As" menu option, with a new name. This preserves the original marked-up version for future reference. Previous versions of Microsoft Word also contain the track changes feature, and function similarly to Word 2007.
• Once you save the document after accepting or rejecting tracked changes, they are permanently removed from the document's history.

References

• Microsoft Word Help---Review Tracked Changes and comments
• Microsoft Word Help---Understanding tracked changes, once and for all

Resources

• Microsoft Word Help---Tracking Changes and Comments