Editing in Word 2007: Track Changes and Review
Writing is a lonely art . . . that is, until editors show up. They'll make revisions by adding to your carefully written work, moving stuff around, and deleting text (ouch!). There's no way to identify your original text from the modified text — unless you use Word 2007's Track Changes tool.
Tracking changes as you make them
To note changes on the screen as they're made, simply activate Word's revision-tracking feature: Click the Review tab and then click the Track Changes button. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+E.
With revision tracking turned on, simply start editing the document. Any new text you add appears in red underlining. Text you delete is colored red with strikethrough. (Those aren't really text attributes, but rather are Word showing you which text has been messed with.
To turn off revision tracking, click the Track Changes button again.
- The only clue that you've properly activated revision tracking is that the Track Changes button appears highlighted.
- It's common for Word users not familiar with revision tracking to be frustrated with unexpected red-underlined text. This is simply revision tracking, which someone has enabled. To disable it, click the Track Changes button in the Review tab's Tracking group.
Reviewing the changes
It's understood that you want to scrutinize every change made to your document. Word makes the task easy, thanks to commands in the Changes group found on the Review tab. Here's how things go:
1. Press Ctrl+Home to start at the top of the document.
Ensure that you're looking at the compared document, not the original or edited version (refer to the preceding section).
2. Click the Next button to locate the next change in your document.
• To accept the change, click the Accept button. The change is approved, and you're taken to the next bit of modified text. Or:
• To reject the change, click the Reject button. The change is removed from your document, and you're taken to the next location where text has been modified.
3. Save the final document.
When you've found the last change and fixed it (or not), a dialog box explains that your quest is over. The document has been reviewed. You should now save it to disk by giving it a new name so that you know it's the result of combined efforts.
Going through this process removes all the revision marks from your document. Here are a few more pointers to keep in mind:
- Use the X buttons to close various task panes that are open for the reviewing process.
- When you're in a real hurry, you can use the drop-down menus beneath either the Accept or Reject command button to choose either the Accept All Changes in Document or Reject All Changes in Document commands, respectively.
- When you goof, you can choose Edit --> Undo, just as you can undo any other boo-boo.
- You can right-click any revision mark to accept or reject it.

Word Glossary
AutoCorrect
The built-in Word feature that you can adjust or disable to automatically correct what Word (or you) considers an error.

Word Glossary
autocorrection
Allowing an application to automatically correct what it considers errors, such as spelling and capitalization.

Word Glossary
AutoShape
Common line art shapes (such as squares, pointing arrows, and speech bubbles) that are available to be inserted into a Word document for decoration or illustration.

Word Glossary
block
A portion of text that is selected in a document; this can range from a single character to the entire document. By marking off text as a block, you can perform certain actions, or use various Word commands, that affect only the text in that block. You can also copy or move the block of text.

Word Glossary
border
A line that is added above, below, or to either side of a paragraph. A border is useful for setting a block of text apart from surrounding text.

Word Glossary
clip art
Images, both line art and pictures, available in Microsoft Word for a user to place in documents.

Word Glossary
Clip Art library
A collection of clip art images, both line art and pictures, that a user is free to use in Microsoft Word documents.

Word Glossary
column break
A formatting command that ends one column of text and continues that text in another column.

Word Glossary
Compare Document
The feature in Word 2007 with which you can compare changes in one document against another document.

Word Glossary
crop
To make an image smaller by eliminating some of the content, much like cutting an image with a pair of scissors.

Word Glossary
denominator
The part of a fraction that appears after or below the line. For example, in the fraction, 3/64, 64 is the denominator.

Word Glossary
Draft view
One of the five views in Word 2007. This is the most simple and streamlined view.

Word Glossary
drop cap
A specially formatted letter that appears at the beginning of a paragraph. Word offers two styles of drop caps. The first, and most common, begins the paragraph with a large letter that spills down into the text, displacing the first few lines of the paragraph. The second style places the large first letter in the margin adjacent to the paragraph.

Word Glossary
field
In Mail Merge, an individual piece of information in a record, such as first name, last name, date, address, and phone number. Fields are what make a mail-merged document appear customized.

Word Glossary
field code
A placeholder in a Word document that holds variable data (such as a date, or an index tag). Field codes show in gray; toggle their view by pressing Alt+F9.

Word Glossary
gutter
The white space between columns of text in a document. Word sets the default width of gutters at ½ inch, although you can change this amount.

Word Glossary
hard return
Pressing Enter (PC) or Return (Mac) to insert a paragraph symbol and create a new paragraph.

Word Glossary
hyperlink
An embedded and active link that, when clicked, takes you from a document to a Web site or URL.

Word Glossary
justify
To adjust horizontal spacing so that text is aligned evenly along both the left and right margins. Justifying text creates a smooth edge on both sides.

Word Glossary
linked text boxes
Two or more text boxes containing text that flows from one text box to the next. If two text boxes are linked, the text they contain starts in the first box and ends in the second.

Word Glossary
nonbreaking hyphen
Creating a special hyphen in Word that will not allow hyphenated words (such as disability-only services) to break at the end of a line (dis-ability-only services).

Word Glossary
NORMAL.DOTM
A special template file where Word stores all the settings for any new document you create. In Word, all documents are based on the Normal document template.

Word Glossary
numerator
The part of a fraction that appears before or above the line. For example, in the fraction, 3/64, 3 is the numerator.

Word Glossary
Office Help system
The built-in feature of Word where you can search for help about Word.

Word Glossary
ordinal
A number that indicates a position in a series, such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on. Ordinals are one of the main reasons for using superscripts.

Word Glossary
Print Layout view
One of the five views in Word 2007. In this view, you can see how the document will print according to its page breaks.

Word Glossary
Print Preview
The feature in Word that you can open to see how your document will look after printing.

Word Glossary
proofing
Checking a document for errors, especially spelling, grammar, and layout.

Word Glossary
Protect Document
The feature in Word 2007 with which you can assign or restrict editing rights to a document.

Word Glossary
pull quote
A text box that highlights a quote from the document in which it appears.

Word Glossary
Quick Styles
A collection of thumbnail presets that you can apply to text. You can use these styles to quickly format your document.

Word Glossary
record
1. (noun) In Mail Merge, a collection of information about a person, organization, or event. A record consists of fields, which are individual pieces of information, such as first name, last name, date, address, and phone number. 2. (verb) To set down in permanent form, such as through writing.

Word Glossary
Research task pane
The search pane that opens on the right side of the screen when you right-click a word with a wavy red or green underline and then choose Look Up from the menu that appears.

Word Glossary
Ribbon
A panel of tabs representing different functional areas in Word. Each tab contains command buttons and icons, organized into related groups. A new feature of Word 2007, the Ribbon replaces the menus and toolbars from earlier versions of Word.

Word Glossary
SmartArt
A Microsoft Word feature that lets you add several different types of useful diagrams to your document. The idea behind SmartArt diagrams is to represent a bullet list as a diagram of interconnected shapes.

Word Glossary
soft return
Manually inserting a new line without creating a new paragraph. On a PC keyboard, the shortcut is Shift+Enter.

Word Glossary
spell checker
A feature in many applications that checks spelling (and often grammar) against a built-in dictionary.

Word Glossary
style
1. (noun) A collection of formatting commands that can be applied to text to make a document look more consistent and attractive. 2. (verb) To make consistent with a formatting convention by applying a certain style.

Word Glossary
synonym
Words that have similar meanings, such as pink and rosy.

Word Glossary
template
A special type of document file used as the basis for formatting new documents.

Word Glossary
text box
A special type of shape designed to place text on your Microsoft Word document without regard to the normal page margins.

Word Glossary
text wrapping
The way text is arranged in relation to a picture or image in a document.

Word Glossary
text wrapping style
An option for arranging text around an image in a document, such as In Line with Text, Behind Text, In Front of Text, or Tight.

Word Glossary
Thesaurus
The built-in Word feature that offers synonyms and antonyms.

Word Glossary
Track Changes
The feature in Word with which you can monitor who adds and deletes what from a document. You can hide Track Changes but still have them enabled.

Word Glossary
URL
Abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator. Used in common speech to mean a Web address, such as www.dummies.com.

Word Glossary
watermark
Faint or faded words or images that appear in a document behind the text. One common example is a Confidential watermark placed diagonally across the page.

Word Glossary
Watermark gallery
A collection of preformatted watermark options in Word.

Word Glossary
WordArt
A Microsoft Word feature that takes ordinary text and transforms it into a preformatted (and often rather artistic) design.

Word Glossary
WordArt gallery
A collection displaying Microsoft Word’s many WordArt options.