Reviewing, accepting and rejecting others’ changes in Track Changes

After you’ve redlined a document using Track Changes (and maybe even inserted some comments and printed some review copies) you’ll need to accept or reject the various marked changes in order to finalize the document.  Here’s how.

First, get all the changes visible by choosing “Final Showing Markup” on the Reviewing Toolbar:

(Wait – you don’t see that on your screen?  Go to View, Toolbars, then scroll down until you see Reviewing and click it.)

Now, turn Track Changes off.  To do that, click the Track Changes button (second from the right on the toolbar) so it’s disabled like so:

(Take a look at the toolbar.  Notice how the second button from the right no longer has lines around it?  That means Track Changes is off.  You can also tell by looking at the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen – the “TRK” will be grey, not black.)

If you’re just going to accept all changes in the document, then this is easy-peasy.  Just click the drop-down next to the button with the check-mark and choose Accept All Changes in Document:

Similarly, if you’re going to reject all the changes, use the button with the red “X” mark and do the same thing:

If you’re going to accept some changes but reject others, it’s a little (but not much more) complicated.

1. Put your cursor at the beginning of your document
2. Click the “Next” button to go to the first change to be accepted or rejected
3. Click the Accept button if you want to save the change or the Reject button if you want to discard it
4. Return to step 2 and repeat steps 2 and 3 until you reach the end of the document (note: the more recent versions of Word do not require you to use the “Next” button — the cursor will automatically move to the next change when you Accept/Reject the current change)
5. If your document has comments, be sure to remove those as well by using the “Delete All Comments in Document” option under the Reject button

For more information about Track Changes, see also:

Automatically marking document edits with Track Changes

Showing, hiding and printing tracked changes

Inserting comments with Track Changes

Tagged as: Deletions, editing, Insertions, Redline, Track Changes