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Every writer jealously guards his text. Revision marks are a way of tracking changes made to your document by evil people. Okay, maybe not evil, but people who change things without first making suggestions. To help protect yourself against such intrusion, you can use one of Word's many revision-tracking tools. The following sections outline two ways you can put them to use.
Tracking changes between two versions of the same document
Go ahead and put away the magnifying glass. When someone else returns your Word document to you, it's a cinch to have Word compare the "new" document with your pristine original. Word flags any changes, displaying them for you right on the screen. Here's how:
1. Make sure that you have the edited (newer) document loaded and on the screen.
The original document should be saved to disk. That's okay for now; you don't need to open it. Just open the edited document and have it on the screen in front of you.
 | Yup. The newer and original documents should have two different names. That's best. |
2. Choose Tools --> Compare and Merge Documents.
An Open dialog box appears, though it's named Compare and Merge Documents and not Open.
3. Find the original document on disk.
Use your finely honed Open dialog box skills to find and select the original document on disk.
4. Click the Merge button.
Word thinks long and hard. What it's doing is comparing the document on the screen with the older copy on your hard disk.
5. Peruse the changes.
Snoop over the changes made to your pristine prose by the barbarian interlopers!
 | What you're looking at is your original document, not the edited copy. (Check the name on the title bar.) Remember that! |
New or added text appears underlined and in another color (red on my screen). Deleted text shows up as strikethrough (again red).
In Print Layout view, bubbles appear in the right margin describing what's been deleted or reformatted. In Normal view, this information can only be seen in the Reviewing Pane.
Yes, it is annoying to read. Oui, oui! That's why the next step is to review and accept or reject the changes, which is covered in the next section.
- Each "reviewer" is given his own color on your screen. For example, you may see the revision marks as red. If a second reviewer goes over the text, those comments would appear in a second color, and so on for other reviewers.
- To see the changes as they appear according to the edited document, choose Original Showing Markup from the Display for Review drop-down list (the first item on the Reviewing toolbar).
- To hide the revision marks, choose Final from the Display for Review drop-down list.
Reviewing the changes
There is no sense in showing blind obedience to any editor or critic! If you're a budding writer, it's time for you to learn a new term: STET. It's Latin, and it means to stand. When you STET a revision, you're rejecting the change that was made and wish the item to stand. Now, please keep in mind that under most circumstances, those who revise your text are making changes that will enhance your work. Still, STET is a handy order to give.
To STET the changes in your text, you have several choices.
First, right-click on any revision. From the pop-up menu, you can choose either the Accept or Reject commands. Accept Insertion and Accept Deletion confirm that the change that was made is something you want. Reject Insertion and Reject Deletion are the STET commands; they tell Word to restore the text to its original, intended state.
Second, you can use the buttons on the Reviewing toolbar to find and then accept or reject changes:
To quickly find the next markup, use the Next button on the Reviewing toolbar.
The Previous button takes you back to the preceding markup.
The Accept Change button can be used to grant your approval to any edit.
The Reject Change button is used to, well, STET.
| Third, if you're in a real hurry, you can use the drop-down menus beneath either the Accept Change or Reject Change buttons to choose either the Accept All Changes in Document or Reject All Changes in Document commands, respectively. It's kind of a global admission that either, yes, the editor is right or, no, STET STET STET. |
- If you goof, you can choose Edit --> Undo, just as you can undo any other boo-boo.
- Going through this process removes all the revision marks from your document. If you want to re-review the revisions, you have to repeat the steps in the preceding section for comparing two documents.
| - Don't forget to save your revised text back to disk!
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Tracking changes as you make them
Suppose that you are the editor! Ha! Crack an evil smile as you attempt to scissor and paste someone else's labors. Gads! That must be fun!
Please be gentle as you edit. Don't go nuts! To help, you can activate Word's revision-tracking feature, which lets you see your markups on the screen as you make them.
Activate markup mode by clicking the Track Changes button on the Reviewing toolbar. Or, you can double-click the TRK acronym on the status bar. Or you can choose Tools --> Track Changes. Or you can press Ctrl+Shift+E on the keyboard.
(Ever get the idea that this command isn't trying to hide itself?)
Now edit!
Any text you add appears underlined. Deleted text is immediately banished to the right margin. Or, if you're using Normal view, deleted text is shown in strikethrough.
Have fun.
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