Track Changes

Quick reference

• 00:05 On the review ribbon there's a section called Tracking Changes.
• 00:08 This is possibly one of the most confounding parts of Microsoft Word and
• 00:12 it's so simple to solve, but this drives people crazy.
• 00:16 So, first of all it's a process, first you track changes and
• 00:20 then someone reviews it and they accept changes.
• 00:22 If the changes are never accepted, the name shall always show and be tracked.
• 00:27 Even if you turn this track changes off,
• 00:29 the track changes will still show up because no one bothered to accept them.
• 00:32 Okay, so it's a two step process, first we track then we accept, or we reject,
• 00:36 now at least we have other buttons.
• 00:38 We can reject, we can let's see, previous change,
• 00:41 next change, so let's go ahead and start tracking these changes.
• 00:44 First of all, I can't track until I turn this thing on, notice the tool tip,
• 00:47 Ctrl+Shift+E.
• 00:49 I never remember that, I just hit track changes, so here we go.
• 00:52 I'm gonna go ahead and select your name, and I'm gonna call that recipient name,
• 00:57 see what's happening on my screen.
• 00:59 It is tracking changes and it's showing all the markup.
• 01:02 Now maybe I don't want to show all the markup right now,
• 01:04 I just wanna show simple markup.
• 01:06 When I click simple, it shows me just a little red line off to the side.
• 01:10 It's a little confusing to be writing things and everything turns red.
• 01:14 Then we change the address,
• 01:16 123 Green Street, okay, that little line just got longer.
• 01:20 Now this one, I'm gonna type my name here, okay, do you see what's going on, great.
• 01:27 So now, we're done with this, we're gonna close it and send it off to
• 01:30 the next person who has to make their changes, well they wanna see all my changes.
• 01:34 The red line doesn't tell them much, so when they open up the file,
• 01:37 they're gonna hit this and they're gonna show all markup.
• 01:39 They wanna see exactly what I have changed,
• 01:41 now because it went to a new person, when they start making changes,
• 01:45 their changes will be in a different color.
• 01:48 How does the computer know that?
• 01:49 Let me show you, right over here in the corner is a dialog box operator.
• 01:53 When you click that, it opens up and we have the options to show all of these
• 01:58 things and Advanced Options, shows us all the authors and all the colors.
• 02:03 See, we have here, Color, By author,
• 02:06 you can actually fill this up to as many authors and as many colors as you want.
• 02:10 I once saw a 15-page document, all the track changes turned on, and
• 02:14 when it printed at the color printer ended up being a 40-page document.
• 02:19 That's how many authors had a hand in it, making sense of it,
• 02:22 I have no idea how they did it.
• 02:23 But the reality is, as different authors use this,
• 02:27 the color will change based on the changes they made, you would set that up here.
• 02:31 All right, I'm gonna go ahead and hit cancel and
• 02:33 I'm going to cancel this, as well.
• 02:36 So the reality is, do we want to show the markup as balloons?
• 02:40 This will actually make you crazy, so I'm gonna go ahead and click on balloons and
• 02:44 we're gonna show revisions in Balloons.
• 02:47 Here's what happened, and
• 02:48 this is why people hit the roof when they get a document that looks like this.
• 02:51 They can't take it, 'cause all the formatting is messed up, all these red lines, it's so
• 02:56 confusing to review this.
• 02:59 But, they just don't know they have to turn off the show the balloons and
• 03:03 instead show all revisions in line.
• 03:06 You just have to dig around into this drop down errors and check these,
• 03:10 click these and see what happens.
• 03:12 Okay, at this point let's see the reviewing pane, I can get the reviewing
• 03:16 pane on here and I can go through each of these and review this.
• 03:20 I'm gonna close this, and I've gotta go up here and accept these changes.
• 03:23 So, when I click the accept button, I can accept and move to next, or
• 03:27 I can accept all at once or accept all changes and
• 03:30 stop tracking, that's the best option 'cause it saves me a step.
• 03:34 I'm gonna go ahead and check that, and
• 03:36 notice my Track Changes button just turned off.
• 03:39 It is still showing All Markup, so I would tell it, don't show me any markup at all,
• 03:44 just in case.
• 03:45 And now when I send this off to the next person,
• 03:47 they are not gonna see any red on here at all.
• 03:50 That's a lesson about the Track Changes, when you want it on,
• 03:53 turn the thing on, but don't forget to turn it off.
• 03:56 And then set this back to no markup, and then everybody's happy.
• 04:01 All right, good luck with that.

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