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MICROSOFT WORD – TRACK CHANGE

How to Track Changes in Word? A

Step-by-Step Guide
(Note: This guide on how to track changes in Word is suitable for all MS Word versions including Office
365)

Imagine this: You are preparing a report for an upcoming event. You share the report’s Word
document with your team members since it involves a little bit of collaboration.

However, to your surprise, you notice that they have unnecessarily changed a lot of the
document’s content. Now, how will you keep track of the changes that were made in the article
and restore the original version?

Don’t worry! We have got you covered. In this guide, I will show you how to track changes in
Microsoft Word and different ways to see the changes made to the document.

Table Of Contents

1. How to Track Changes in Word?

2. How to See the Changes Made in a Document?
• Comments
• Markup
• Show Markup
• Reviewing Pane
3. How to Accept/Reject Changes in Word?

Watch this short video to know about How to Track Changes in Word

HOW TO TRACK CHANGES IN WORD?

In Word, you can easily track the changes made by you or others. As the document owner, you can
also accept or reject the changes made by others.
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To do this, you need to first turn on the Track Changes feature. It is very simple. Let us see how to
do this.

1. Open any Word document and click on the Review tab.

2. Go to the Tracking section and click on Track Changes. Or, you can use the keyboard shortcut
(Ctrl+Shift+E) to start tracking the changes.

How to track changes in Word?

Once the Track Changes feature is enabled, every change made by you or others will be tracked by
Word.

By default, the changes you make will have a red margin on the left. This margin color will be
different for different authors who make changes to the document.

Changes made
will be indicated by a red margin

Turn off Tracking Changes

If you don’t want to track the changes anymore, you can easily turn it off.

Go to Review > Tracking and click on Track Changes again. Or, you can use the keyboard shortcut
(Ctrl+Shift+E) to disable it.
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Once you have switched off track changes, the word does not track any changes that are made.
However, the previously made changes will be recorded and visible.

HOW TO SEE THE CHANGES MADE IN A

DOCUMENT?

There are different ways to see the changes made in a document. You can use any one of them
based on your preferences. Let us see them one by one.

Comments
As a writer or an editor, you can leave comments to let others know about the change made, or
about the change you want them to make.

To add comments to the document, select the text you want to add a comment on and click
on Add Comment.

Now, type in the comment inside the comments box.

Some users prefer to add comments to indicate changes made in a document.

Click on
the Show Comments option to view all comments

You can click on “Show Comments” to toggle on or off the visibility of the comments section. Also,
you can delete or navigate between comments by clicking on Delete, Previous or Next buttons
respectively.
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Markup
There 4 ways to see the changes made to the document by selecting any one option from the
Markup dropdown.

• Simple Markup

The simple markup points out the changes with a red margin towards the left side of the document.
It does not give much detail about the changes. It just points out the places where the changes are
made

Simple
Markup displays where changes were made

• All Markup

To activate this, click on the Simple Markup drop-down and choose All Markup. It gives a detailed
description of the changes. It shows all the changes made, including comments, and other details
like font style and size. It also indicates newly added text with an underline and deleted text with a
strikethrough.

All
Markup displays all changes in detail

• No Markup

To activate this, click on the Simple Markup dropdown and choose No Markup. Instead of
indicating the places that changed or the details of the changes, No Markup simply displays the
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latest version with all the changes incorporated into the document. That is, it shows how the
document would look after the changes are made.

No
Markup displays the final version of the document when all changes are incorporated

• Original

The last drop-down option, the Original Markup shows the original format of the document before
the Track Changes feature was switched on and changes were made. You can use this to restore
the original version of the document, in case of an inadvertent error.

Original displays the original version of the document

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Show Markup
In any document, there will definitely be more than one type of change/editing. However, you may
be interested only in certain types of changes. (sematext) How can you track only certain kinds of
changes in Word?

You can choose to see any one or more types of change made by selecting them in the Show
Markup dropdown.

Here, you can toggle on or off to view the comments, formatting, insertions and deletions.
Additionally, you can choose the options from the balloons to show the revisions inline or
separately.

Moreover, you can also see the changes made by specific people using the show markup drop
down and selecting the Specific People option.

Use Show
Markup to see specific kinds of changes

Reviewing Pane
If you are an editor, or if the article has just come back from the editor, you might want to see the
changes in a detailed format. The Review Pane helps you see the changes in a list view.

It provides details like the inserted text, the format of the text, the comments, and the deleted text
(if any).

To see the detailed review window, just click on the Review Pane in the Review tab and
choose Reviewing Pane Horizontal/Vertical. This opens up a dialog box and shows you the details
of the changes, as shown below.
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Use the
Reviewing Pane to list all changes

You can also place the Review Pane in a horizontal or vertical position based on your preference.

HOW TO ACCEPT/REJECT CHANGES IN

WORD?

Word doesn’t stop at keeping track of the changes made by others. It also gives you the liberty to
accept or reject the changes made in the document.

To accept or reject the changes, click on the Review tab and click on Accept in
the Changes section.

You can accept all the changes at once, or accept the changes one by one by clicking on the drop-
down and choosing Accept All Changes.

Accept / reject
changes

In the same way, you can also reject any changes made to the document. You can reject all the
changes at once, or reject the changes one by one by clicking on the drop-down and
choosing Reject All Changes.