This guide explains how to use the “Track Changes” feature of Microsoft Word, which lets you quickly view that changes that have been made to a document.
One of the great features of Microsoft Word is that you can track all of the changes made while writing/editing a document. This feature is very useful in cases when multiple people have to edit the document. Everyone can see how content has been edited and formatted to that point, making it much easier to finalize a project etc. Here’s how to use it –
- Launch Microsoft Word and open a document that you want to keep track of the changes in.
- Select the Review tab from the ribbon and then click the Track Changes button.
- Now just start making changes to the document. You’ll notice right away that the changes are in a different color, new text is underlined and deleted text has a
strikethrough it. - If you’ve received a document that has changes in it and you want to approve all of those changes, click the Accept button and select Accept All Changes
- Once you go through the document and accept or reject the changes, it will look ‘normal’ again.
- You can really customize the Tracking features by clicking the very, very small button in the bottom right corner of the Tracking section of the ribbon (see screenshot below).
- This will bring up the Track Changes Options panel. Place or remove check marks next to the boxes of the things that you want to have displayed as a “change”. Click the Advanced Options… button after you’ve made your selections.
- From here you can really customize how the tracked changes appear in the document. Have fun!
If this tutorial helped, be sure to check out our other tutorials on Microsoft Word.
