Academic Consulting

Working collaboratively for research and/or writing purposes is becoming increasingly common. While such approaches can be extremely rewarding, they bring with them the challenge of managing the differing contributions of team members. MS Word has a range of useful ‘reviewing’ features that can be immensely helpful when writing collaboratively (or when receiving feedback from thesis supervisors). This article includes a brief how-to-guide for those who are new to this feature, and some useful tips for those who are already using Revision Control.

What is Revision Control?

The Revision Control features in MS Word enable you to add comments and keep track of any changes that are made to a document. These changes become ‘marked’, either within the text itself or as balloons in the right-hand margin. This feature easily enables multiple people to make changes to a document, which can then be easily viewed by other team members.

How Do I Use Revision Control?

There are a number of methods to access the Revision Control features - one of the quickest ways is to show the ‘Reviewing’ toolbar. To do so, from the MS Word menu bar, choose View > Toolbars > Reviewing. The reviewing toolbar should now appear on your screen (most likely located under the other toolbars at the top of your MS Word window). Hover your mouse over each button to see what function it performs.

How Do I Insert a Comment?

Comments serve a similar purpose to putting a Post-It note on a hard copy of a document. They can be used for your own thoughts (perhaps for things to come back to later) or for someone else’s comments. To insert a comment into your MS Word document, select the text you wish to add a comment to and click the Insert Comment button on the Reviewing toolbar (alternatively you can choose Insert > Comment from the MS Word menu bar). A pop-out balloon will appear in the right-hand margin, allowing you to enter the text of your comment. Click back into the main text of your document once you have finished typing to continue as normal. Your comment will now appear in your document.

How Do I Track Changes?

To track changes you make to a document, click the Track Changes button on the Reviewing toolbar or choose Tools >Track Changes from the MS Word menu bar. This will not immediately change your document, but you can tell that this feature is turned on by checking the status bar at the bottom of your screen - the letters TRK will appear in black.

As you begin to edit your document, MS Word will identify any changes made. Some will be displayed in the text of your document, while others will appear in the right-hand margin. The colour that MS Word assigns to any tracked changes will likely be red, but this will depend on your computer set-up and the number of previous reviewers. If multiple reviewers are working on a document, they will each be assigned a different colour.

When you have finished making changes, you should turn this feature off to stop MS Word tracking changes. To do so, click the Track Changes button on the Reviewing toolbar or choose Tools > Track Changes from the MS Word menu bar. Check the letters TRK no longer appear in the status bar.

Accepting, Rejecting, and Deleting

Once tracked changes or comments have been made to a document, you will then wish to decide what to ‘keep’ and what to ‘ignore’. This is done by a process of ‘accepting’ and ‘rejecting’ changes. Once again, there are a number of ways to approach this, our favourite method is to use start at the beginning of the document and use the Next and Previous buttons on the Reviewing toolbar to move through each change.

As these buttons select each tracked change, you can then decide whether to ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ the change (or delete the comment). This can be performed via the Accept Change and Reject Change/Delete Comment buttons on the Reviewing toolbar. Click on these buttons as required as you work your way through the document.

Common Misunderstandings

When using tracked changes you should be aware that when you turn Track Changes off, your tracked changes (or ‘marked-up’ text) will still appear in your document. By turning this feature off, you have simply stopped MS Word from tracking any further changes, you have not actually indicated that you wish to return to your original document or accept any changes made.

A second common mistake is that the view of the document is changed so that it looks like all changes have been accepted or rejected. This can be done via the Reviewing Toolbar by the Show button or Display for Review drop down list. Choosing ‘Final’ from this list will show the document as it would look if all changes were accepted, while ‘Original’ will allow you to view it as if all changes were rejected. It is extremely important to be aware that this has not actually accepted or rejected the changes, they are just temporarily hidden. Unless you review your changes and correctly accept or reject them (see above) these tracked changes may well come back and haunt you at a later date!

Tips for Using Track Changes

Changing the Reviewers Name

Depending on who installed your MS Office software, you may not have your own name and initials appear next to any comments or changes. If you are working with multiple reviewers, it is extremely useful to have the name of the reviewer associated with the changes they have made. To change the reviewer name, from the MS Word menu bar, choose Tools > Options and select the ‘User Information’ tab. Enter your own name and initials and then click OK.

Speedy Acceptance

In many instances you are likely to want to accept most of the changes that have been made (depending on who the other reviewers are of course!). In these situations, you may find it quicker to proceed through the changes in your document and only reject what you do not wish to keep. You can then choose to quickly accept all the remaining changes in your document. To do so, click on the drop-down menu to the left of the Accept Changes button and select Accept All Changes in Document. This can also be applied in reverse of course!

Oops - I Didn’t Mean to Send That!

Ever sent an important document and belatedly realise that you hadn’t removed all the tracked changes? While in most instances this is relatively harmless (other than making you look a bit foolish), it can be extremely problematic if your document contains confidential or sensitive information. To avoid this happening, you can change the settings in your security options. To do so, from the MS Word menu bar choose Tools > Options and select the ‘Security’ tab. Ensure that the following two boxes are ticked: "Warn before printing, saving or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments" and "Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving".