8.6 Track changes, comments and comparing versions

What you'll be able to do

Run a document past several reviewers and see exactly who changed what. Accept the good, refuse the rest, answer the comments, and rebuild the differences even when someone edited with the recording switched off.

Before you start

Use your long report document, ideally with a colleague to trade edits with. A second account of your own also works.

The work

1. Same either way: switch recording on with Ctrl+Shift+E, which is the switch for Track Changes, also shown on the Review tab. From that moment every edit is recorded as a proposal. Insertions and deletions are marked, and each one carries its author and the time. Nothing is final until somebody accepts it.
2. No documented keyboard shortcut for this — use the menu: choose how much of the marking to look at. The display dropdown on the Review tab holds the four views. All Markup shows every proposal in the text, which is the view for reviewing. Simple Markup shows clean text with a bar in the margin, and clicking a bar expands it. That is the view for reading, and most people's daily choice. No Markup previews the document as if everything had been accepted. Original shows how it was before. One document, four ways of looking at it.
3. No documented keyboard shortcut for this — use the menu: decide on purpose. Review → Next moves from proposal to proposal, and Accept or Reject each one from its dropdown. Never accept a whole document you have not walked through. Accept All exists for the moment after that walk, when only agreed changes are left. Each decision either builds the proposal in or discards it, and the marking disappears as you go.
4. Same either way: comments are the conversation beside the edits. Ctrl+Alt+M adds one on the selection, for a question, a reason or a disagreement. Naming a colleague with the @ sign notifies them, exactly as the co-authoring lesson taught. Resolve a settled thread rather than deleting it. Resolved threads fold away and keep the reasoning on record.
5. No documented keyboard shortcut for this — use the menu: here is the rescue tool for the colleague who edited with recording off. Review → Compare → Compare takes the original and their returned copy. It produces a third document where every difference appears as a recorded change, with an author, ready to accept or refuse. It is the list of differences, rebuilt after the fact. Combine, beside it, folds several reviewers' recorded copies into one document, for a single pass of decisions.
6. Same either way: here is the rule that prevents a well-known embarrassment. Recorded changes and comments travel with the file. A document sent out with the marking still in it shows the reader every deletion, every hesitation and every internal comment. Before anything leaves: decide on everything, resolve or delete the comments, and run the Document Inspector (File → Info → Check for Issues) exactly as the workbook-hygiene lesson taught. It reports leftover marking as a category of its own.

Try it

Switch Track Changes on and trade the report with your colleague, each doing a round of edits and comments. Read their pass in Simple Markup, decide change by change, and resolve the threads. Then have them edit a copy with recording off, and rebuild their edits with Compare.

Check yourself