Editing someone else's document without tracking is a quick way to lose their trust. Turning Track Changes on first shows every edit clearly, which is exactly what professionals expect when a draft comes back.
Step by step
- Open the document you want to edit.
- Press Ctrl+Shift+E. Track Changes is now on.
- Edit as normal. Insertions and deletions are marked for review.
- Press Ctrl+Shift+E again to stop tracking.
Tips & troubleshooting
- Add context with a comment: select the text and press Ctrl+Alt+M.
- Check the Review tab to confirm Track Changes is highlighted before you start editing.
Choose what you see
The Display for Review list on the Review tab changes the view without changing the document.
- Simple Markup: a clean page with a red line in the margin wherever something changed. Click the line to see the detail.
- All Markup: every insertion underlined and every deletion struck through or shown in the margin.
- No Markup: how the document would look if every change were accepted.
- Original: how it looked before any tracked edits.
The mistake that embarrasses people
No Markup hides tracked changes. It does not remove them. If you send the file like that, the recipient can switch to All Markup and read every deleted sentence and comment. Before a document leaves the building, accept or reject the changes for real: on the Review tab open the Accept list and choose Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking. Then run File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document to confirm nothing is left.
Reviewing someone else's changes
- Use Next and Previous on the Review tab to step through the changes one at a time.
- Accept or Reject deals with the current change and moves to the next.
- Right-click any change for the same choices.
- To deal with one reviewer's edits only, use Show Markup, Specific People to hide everyone else's first.
Keep tracking switched on
When several people edit a file, someone always turns tracking off by accident. The Track Changes button has a Lock Tracking option that sets a password, so tracking can't be switched off without it. You can also right-click the status bar at the bottom of Word and tick Track Changes to show a permanent on or off indicator.
In Word for Mac the shortcut is Cmd+Shift+E.