This is a fun trick I picked up at a technology training seminar Bruce was teaching on Wednesday.
Word 2007 has a great new feature called Track Changes that allows you to see what changes have been made to a document. This is especially useful for legal documents, newsletter articles and drafts of letters you’d send to clients. You can find the tools you need to track changes on the “Reviewing” tab of the Ribbon (I just learned that term, it’s the actual name for the light blue area on the top of your Word window.)
Start Tracking Changes
To start tracking the changes you make to a document, click on Track Changes icon.
- Click Review Tab on the Ribbon
- Click Track Changes
- Make the changes to your document and you will see any changes you have made.
It’s soooo easy!
New Views!
There are four ways to view a document once you’ve started to track changes. They are:
- Final Showing Markup: This shows the document with the changes displayed
- Final: This shows the changed document, without showing the changes
- Original Showing Markup: The original document with the changes displayed
- Original: The original document without any changes.
Favorite Feature!
The Show Markup feature lets you see different items (comments, formatting, etc.) and choose to view different editors’ comments. After you view the changes in a document you can either choose to accept or reject the changes. This way, you can review the document step-by-step to accept or reject each change.
There’s also a Comments feature that lets you insert comments in the margin of the document. To add a new comment, put your cursor where you would like to add the comment and click on New Comment. Seriously, anybody can do this… and it’ll make your life so much easier.
