Track Changes

What You Will Learn

(this guide table of contents) ------- (MS Word New Users FAQ)

Using Track Changes

Using Track Changes in Word allows you to do electronically what you used to do manually. No more red marks on a printed document; no more circled text with arrows indicating moves.

Track Changes is composed of two parts. The first is viewing edits in a document as you make changes and the second is comparing two documents, frequently called "redlining."

Track Changes Options

Double-clicking the TRK button on the status bar or selecting Tools > Track Changes > Highlight Changes will access Track Changes. You may also access this by turning on the Reviewing toolbar.

To set the options you want for revisions, select Tools > Options > Track Changes tab.

Practice: Set Options and Track Changes

1. Open a document for editing.
2. Double click TRK in the Status bar.
3. Select Tools > Options > Track changes, and select the options of your choice and click OK.
4. Delete some text.
5. Add some text.
6. Change the formatting of a word or paragraph.
7. Pause the cursor over the changes in the document to see when and by whom they were made.
8. Save the document.

Viewing Tracked Changes

When you receive a document with changes, you have several options for viewing the changes and accepting or rejecting them.

To access these options, turn on the Reviewing toolbar by alternate-clicking any toolbar and selecting Reviewing.

Pause the cursor over any marked change and a ScreenTip appears.

To review the changes in a document, click Next Change or Previous Change on the Reviewing toolbar. As each change is selected, click Accept or Reject.

If you prefer to accept or reject all changes, select Tools > Track Changes > Accept or Reject Changes. Select the appropriate choice. You will receive a message asking whether you want to accept/reject all remaining changes without reviewing them. If you select No, you will continue reviewing the changes one at a time.

If you do not want your changes marked, turn Track Changes off by double-clicking the TRK on the Status bar. If you cannot turn it off, the document has been protected with a password.

To assure that all reviewers have their changes tracked, protect and add a password to the document.

Protecting a Document for Tracked Changes

1. Open a document you want to protect.
2. Select Tools > Protect Document.
3. Select Tracked Changes, type a password that you are sure to remember in the Password box, and click OK.
4. Confirm the password by typing it in the Confirm Password dialog box.
5. Click OK.

Comparing Documents

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Microsoft recommends that most law firms use a third party solution for document comparison, such as Lexis-Nexis' CompareRite, or Workshare's Deltaview. See the chapter on third party solutions for more information about these products. Microsoft Word's compare documents features works on relatively simple documents that do not contain too much complex formatting. Because of the complex nature of most legal documents, Word's compare documents feature does not produce as good a result as the third party products mentioned above. Microsoft is currently working to address this shortcoming, but in the meantime the third party solutions are recommended.

CK NOTE: In Word 2000, there is a bug that shows up when the document includes one or more tables. A workaround is given for this situation in knowledge base article Q246486. The workaround is to use the reviewing toolbar rather than the dialog box to Accept or Reject Changes. If you use the dialog box and a row has changes in more than one cell, only the first change in the row will be handled, any others will be skipped.

CK NOTE: Recommended method of comparing complex documents within Word. Convert one or both to text files and use Word to compare the text files. You won't get formatting changes but will pick up all changes to your text.

The compare document feature allows Word to compare one document to another and mark the differences between the two. These marked changes appear on the screen in the current document. If you wish to save the changes in this marked document, select File > Save As. If you do not need to save this "compared" document, it can be printed and closed without saving changes.

Practice: Compare Documents

1. Open a new, blank document and type This is an original patent application.
2. Save the document as Original Pat.doc.
3. With the document still open, change the word, "original" to "amended."
4. Add the words Filed on (today's date).
5. Select File > Save As and name the document Amended Pat.doc.
6. Leaving this file open, select Tools > Track changes > Compare Documents.

This dialog box will open and you may select the original document by double-clicking.

7. The changes appear in the document.
8. Click File > Save As, and name the new document Compared Pat.doc.

Document Merge

The first thing to remember is that this is not a mail merge! Document Merge is a powerful feature in Word that allows you to take a document that has been reviewed by a number of people and quickly incorporate or merge these edits into the original document.

Each editor's revision is marked in a different color. If there are more than eight people involved, the colors will be repeated. After you merge the changes into the original, you can then accept or reject each change.

Practice Merging Documents

1. Protect the document by clicking Tools > Protect Document.
2. Choose Tracked Changes and add a password.
3. Remember that the password is case sensitive!
4. After the document has been protected, tell others it is ready for review. The document can be sent to all reviewers via e-mail or on a floppy disk.
5. After it has been reviewed and edited, the changes can be merged into the original document.
6. Open the original document.
7. Select Tools > Merge Documents.
8. Select File to Merge into Current Document

   

9. Double-click one of the documents containing changes or click Open.
10. Repeat step seven until all changes have been merged.
11. You now have a single document (your original) with all the merged changes.
12. Select Tools > Track Changes > Accept or Reject Changes.

    

13. Click the Find arrows to navigate through the document and choose to Accept, Reject, Accept All, or Reject All to incorporate these changes into your document.

Other Ways to Compare Documents

If you've used CompareRite for generating your compared documents in the past, you can continue to use it in Word 97 and Word 2000. It is available from LEXIS-NEXIS. Another product that is making a big splash in the legal market is DeltaView made by Workshare Technologies. At the time of this writing there is a downloadable trial version of DeltaView at http://www.workshare.net/. CompareRite information is available from LEXIS-NEXIS at http://www.lexisnexis.com/. As mentioned above, Microsoft recommends that for now, when comparing complex documents, these third party products should be used instead of Microsoft Word's built-in compare documents.

CK Section:

Inserting Comments in a Document

You can insert Comments into a document and either print or conceal them.

Insert => Comment.

In Word 97-2000 inserting a comment appears to highlight the preceding text (but the highlighting does not print) and moving the mouse cursor over the highlighted area displays the comment on screen as a tool tip.

In Word 2002- comments are displayed in an expanded margin in balloons, by default. This not only displays, but prints. You can change this back to the Word 97 method under the Track Changes options.

Tools => Options => Track Changes (tab)

Tell Word that you want balloons displayed Never.

Trouble Shooting Track Changes

Why is Track Changes on when I just opened a document to edit?

It had been turned on when the document was last closed. To turn it off, double-click TRK on the Status bar. If this does not turn it off, there is probably a password attached and it is protected.

Four people have edited the document. How can I tell who did which edits?

Pause the cursor over the edit and it will show you the author, date, and time of the edit. Each new editor (up to 8 people) gets a new color, so once you find out which person goes with which edit color, you can quickly tell who edited what.

I need to send this document to a client. How do I get rid of all the editing marks?

You can accept all changes, reject all changes, or go through them one by one and mark to accept or reject them individually.

Can I use Word's Track Changes and then use CompareRite or DeltaView?

This is not a good idea as the document may become corrupt no matter which one is used first.