Track Changes

Quick reference

• 00:04 On the Review ribbon we have the tracking section,
• 00:07 which is possible one of the most confounding features in Microsoft Word.
• 00:11 But to control it,
• 00:12 it's actually fairly simple if you understand the basics of what's going on.
• 00:16 First of all, my Track Changes is not turned on.
• 00:19 I know it's not turned on because this button right here isn't highlighted.
• 00:22 So I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna just turn it on.
• 00:24 And you can see now that button is gray, it is on, all right?
• 00:28 So let's go ahead and make a change.
• 00:30 So I'm going to wipe out this and I'm gonna type Andy GoSkills.
• 00:34 Notice what happened off to the left, I get a little red line.
• 00:37 That tells me nothing.
• 00:38 I've no idea why that red line showed up.
• 00:40 So it's because right up here, Simple Markup Is, by default,
• 00:44 what shows up when you start it.
• 00:46 But if you choose All Markup on the drop-down arrow,
• 00:48 now you can see what was there has been crossed out.
• 00:52 And what is there, the new one that has not yet been accepted and
• 00:55 approved, is in red, okay?
• 00:57 So then I can make another change right here.
• 00:59 I'll just type 123 Green St..
• 01:02 Now as you can see, the old is crossed out, the new is in red.
• 01:05 So now the Show Markup, if I wanna show Balloons, Show Revision in Balloons.
• 01:12 When I click that, up comes a little
• 01:15 margin over here which will just ruin your day if you don't know how to control that.
• 01:20 And the best way to control that is basically, turn off the Balloons.
• 01:23 We don't want to show, we don't want to do that.
• 01:26 So we'll just do all formatting inline.
• 01:29 Okay, let's see.
• 01:30 They have to be accepted.
• 01:31 Your changes must be accepted.
• 01:33 That goes hand in hand with tracking and changes is accepting these changes.
• 01:37 So when I hit the drop-down arrow, Accept and
• 01:39 Move to Next, Accept All Changes, Accept and Stop Tracking.
• 01:44 Let's go ahead and accept all changes.
• 01:46 They've been accepted.
• 01:47 They all turned black.
• 01:48 Still showing all markup, but my Track Changes is still on because most people
• 01:52 when they finish forget to turn this thing off.
• 01:55 And then it could be another week from now and
• 01:58 I'm typing your name and this happens all over again.
• 02:01 And people kind of hit the roof and
• 02:03 they don't know how to control it cuz no one turned this off.
• 02:06 All right?
• 02:07 It's either on all the time or it's off all the time.
• 02:09 You've got to physically get up there and hit that button.
• 02:11 All right?
• 02:12 So I'm going to go ahead and turn off track changes.
• 02:16 So it's no longer going to track, but I do have to tell it, don't show me any markup.
• 02:21 Just show me the results.
• 02:22 Okay, so that's how you basically control it.
• 02:25 So we track it and we change it.
• 02:26 Let's not forget this little arrow right here on the corner.
• 02:29 So when I activate that, we can come in here and change these options.
• 02:33 And we can change our user name, so if you don't want your name to show up on
• 02:37 the changes, who authored the change, you can give yourself a nickname if you want.
• 02:43 The advanced options shows you the different colors.
• 02:46 I've seen eight different colors before and so many tracked changes on a 15-page
• 02:51 document, when printed with all the changes ended up being a 40-page document.
• 02:55 So you can go a little crazy with how many authors and how many colors.
• 02:59 But if it's going back and forth between offices, we can't avoid that so.
• 03:02 All right, that's the lesson on track changes.
• 03:05 Turn it on, turn it off, show no markup and make sure you accept all the changes.
• 03:10 All right.
• 03:11 Thank you.

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