Tracking Changes In Microsoft Word Projects- What You Have To Know
Created with the purpose of facilitating everyday tasks, Microsoft Word comes with features that easily enable users to increase productivity in areas like project management. One of the highly covered topics educators conducting Microsoft Word training courses in Singapore would tend to cover for all participants would be making use of the software’s functions to track changes. If you have multiple colleagues handling one project simultaneously, here is what you need to know about tracking changes:
Before distributing or sharing Microsoft Word projects, check to make sure that the tracking changes option is active. If it is not, users can choose to turn the function on by searching for the Review tab and choosing the track changes option. Microsoft Word will then begin to track all changes that have been made by others in the form of mark ups. The markup options can be customised by users as well, since it exists to facilitate easy viewing.
Under the same Tracking group found under the Review tab, select the simple markup list option. Default tracking marks changes with red lines (in the margins), but users can choose different options according to what is required. To temporarily stop viewing the changes, choose No MarkUp. To see the markups again, simply choose All Markups or Simple Markup once more. All edits are marked with different colours and lines so that users can easily keep track of who made what changes. If you don’t need to track every change and would like to track only certain ones, Microsoft Word can facilitate that. Simply choose the Show Markup list once more and choose the choices you want tracked- Comments, Specific users, Insertion/Deletion, Formats and more.
As an added security measure, Microsoft Word allows the document creator to keep the track changes function active and prevent other collaborators from turning them off. To do so, access the track changes list and choose lock tracking. One thing to note however, is that no one else will be able to accept or reject any changes for your Microsoft Word projects once the lock tracking function is in place. Users can also set a password for this function to discourage others from turning the function off.
Only turn off track changes once everything has been finalised and there are no further changes that are to be made. Turning the function off ensures that Microsoft Word does not track any new changes, but the previously tracked ones will still continue to exist until they are removed. In the event that users need to remove the tracked changes, simply accept or reject the proposed changes.
Access the Review tab and search for the Changes Group. Switch between Previous and Next to view changes one by one. For convenience, you can choose the Accept All Changes or Reject All Changes option.