Track Changes
By the Syncfusion DevTutorials team · Last updated
Record every edit with Track Changes, review it, and accept or reject it, then review a newsletter in the Chapter 6 project.
When someone edits your document, how do you know what they changed? Track Changes records every insertion, deletion, and formatting change, and shows it in color. Then you decide, change by change, what to keep. In this lesson, you'll turn on Track Changes, review the changes, and accept or reject them. At the end, you'll review a whole document in the Chapter 6 project.
Open the Word sandbox and follow along. The tools are on the Review tab.
Enable Track Changes
Go to Review > Track Changes to turn it on. (In Microsoft Word, you can also press Ctrl + Shift + E.) The button stays highlighted while tracking is on.
From now on, every change is recorded:
- Inserted text is shown in color and underlined.
- Deleted text is shown in color with a line through it, instead of disappearing.
- A line in the margin marks each changed line, so you can spot edits quickly.
Each change also remembers who made it and when, so several reviewers can edit the same document and you can still tell their changes apart.
Turn Track Changes on before you start editing. Changes made while it's off aren't recorded, and there's no way to show them afterwards.
Review changes
Sooner or later, a document comes back full of colored marks, and it's your job to go through them. When you get a document back with tracked changes, review them one by one:
- Press Ctrl + Home to go to the start of the document.
- On the Review tab, click Next to jump to the first change.
- Read it, then accept or reject it (below). Word moves on to the next change.
- Repeat until there are no changes left.
In the sandbox, the Changes pane beside the document lists every change with its author, so you can also review them from there.
Turn off Track Changes while you review. Otherwise your own accept and reject decisions, plus any fixes you make on the way, get tracked as new changes too.
Accept changes
Each review ends in one of two decisions. Accepting a change makes it permanent: inserted text becomes normal text, and deleted text is really removed.
- One change: click the change, then Review > Accept (or right-click it and choose Accept).
- Every change: Review > Accept > Accept All Changes.
Reject changes
The other decision is to reject. Rejecting a change undoes it: inserted text is removed, and deleted text comes back.
- One change: click the change, then Review > Reject.
- Every change: Review > Reject > Reject All Changes.
Accept All and Reject All are quick, but use them only when you trust every change, or none of them. Most of the time it's worth going through the changes with Next, so nothing slips in by accident.
Common mistakes
Here are the most common traps, and how to fix them:
| Mistake | What happens | How to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| Forgetting to turn tracking on | Your edits aren't marked | Undo the edits, turn on Track Changes, and redo them |
| Thinking deleted text is gone | It's still in the file, crossed out | Accept the deletion to remove it |
| Sending a file with unreviewed changes | The reader sees all the markup and old text | Accept or reject every change first |
| Leaving tracking on in the final version | New edits by the reader are tracked | Turn Track Changes off before you finish |
| Using Reject All by mistake | Good edits are thrown away | Press Ctrl + Z straight away |
Exercise
Now it's time to track some changes yourself.
Click New in the sandbox title bar, and type The meeting starts at 9 am in room 4. Then do each task and press Check.
Chapter project
You've now learned views, the Navigation Pane, comments, and Track Changes. Put Chapter 6 together. You're the editor of a club newsletter: review it, mark your changes, discuss one with a comment, and produce a clean final version.
Review the club newsletter
What to remember
- Review > Track Changes records every insertion and deletion, with the author and time.
- Turn it on before editing, and off while you review.
- Use Next to step through changes; Accept keeps a change, Reject undoes it.
- Accept All and Reject All handle every change at once. Use them with care.
- Before sending a final version, accept or reject every change and turn tracking off.
That's the end of Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, you'll add footnotes, endnotes, and a table of contents.