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:

If your document contains tracked changes, like this:

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:

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:

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.

If your Track Changes needs are more sophisticated than the above, choose from this list of the Top 5 Track Changes-related videos, articles, and training courses on Office.com/support:

• This brief article on how to Turn Track Changes on or off includes a cool tip: You can customize the status bar to add an indicator that tells you when Track Changes is on or off (the Word 2007 version is here).
• If all you want to do is turn off Track Changes, watch this video.
• Demo: Remove tracked changes from Word 2007 documents shows you how to permanently remove revision marks in a Word 2007 document.
• Revise documents with Track Changes and Comments in Word 2007, a training course, will teach you how to review, accept, reject, and hide tracked changes in Word 2007, and along the way you get to practice.
• Track changes while you edit covers the basics of how to track changes in Word 2007 while you edit, and how to change the way that markup is displayed (the Word 2003 article is here).

Bonus track (changes):

Remove tracked changes and comments from a document shows how to ensure that track changes and comments are not left in your Word 2007 documents when you distribute them.

--Louis Broome