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Turn Track Changes off or on, or hide or reveal tracked changes

Today’s post about track changes in Word is contributed by Louis Broome, a manager and writer for Office.com.

To turn Track Changes off, on the Review tab, in the Tracking group, click the Track Changes button (the paper & pencil with the healthy orange glow, pictured below). Here’s the relevant piece of Word real estate:

Tracking group on ribbon in Word.

Microsoft Word icon.

Microsoft Word

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If your document contains tracked changes, like this:

Example of tracked changes in text.

and you want to get rid of them, on the Review tab, in the Changes group, you can Accept or Reject each change or All Changes in Document:

Accept change button on ribbon in Word.

Tracked changes can be hidden, which might or might not be a good thing. Either way, take a moment to become familiar with the Display for Review drop-down list and its four options:

Display for Review drop-down list on ribbon.

Final: Show Markup shows all tracked changes.
Final hides tracked changes to show the document with all proposed changes included.
Original: Show Markup shows the original text with tracked changes and comments.
Original shows the document before any changes were made.

Louis Broome