How to accept or reject Microsoft Word Track Changes on Windows

Microsoft Word Track Changes is a powerful editing function that easily displays edits, suggestions, and feedback that your Kibin editor makes to your document. However, if you aren’t familiar with the track changes feature, it can be a little intimidating and frustrating.

Rest assured, this short video will teach you everything you need to know to accept or reject track changes in Microsoft Word for Windows. So lets get started.

When you open a document in Microsoft Word that contains edits in track changes, you should immediately see them within the text. Your display may be slightly different than mine, but you should see some sort of colored edits.

If for some reason you do not see the edits, you may be in a viewing mode that isn’t displaying them. Let’s navigate to the track changes “review” tab to see what that’s like.

Notice right now I am in the “final showing markup” mode with edits and comments displayed in balloons within the margin. I can also view the document in “final” mode which displays the text as if all the edits made by your Kibin editor were accepted. I can view the document in “original showing markup” mode which is slightly different than final showing markup. You’ll notice that, in this mode, things that were deleted by your editor appear with a strikeout, while in “final showing markup” mode deleted portions don’t show at all. Lastly, you can view the document in “original” mode, which is simply your unedited paper with the edits hidden. If you don’t immediately see your edits when you open your paper, make sure you aren’t viewing it in “final” or “original” mode as this will make the document appear that it contains no edits.

You also have the option to view edits and comments in balloons in the margins or in-line. Right now, the edits are shown in balloons, but simply changing our preference will show them in-line. Now you’ll see each edit and comment within the text. Viewing edits in-line is my personal preference, but yours may be different. I prefer the in-line view because it shows every single edit. Notice that if I’m in the balloon view, I have to switch between “final showing markup” and “original showing markup” in order to see every single change. You may also notice that you can choose to show the review pane. I don’t find this very useful, so I tend to keep it hidden.

Now that we understand the different viewing options, let’s get started accepting and rejecting edits and changes. There are several ways to do this. Again, you will have your own preference, but we’ll work through the different options.

While viewing edits in-line, you can right click to easily accept or reject edits and changes. While this works well, it can get a bit tedious. A faster option is to make sure your cursor is at the beginning of the document and then click “next”. You’ll notice that this will highlight the first edit on the document. Now, it’s easy to either accept or reject the edit. Once you do, the cursor will move to the next edit and highlight it for you. Again, you can now accept or reject the edit. This is the best way to work through your edits one by one.

But if you want to speed things up even more, you may prefer to simply read through your document and reject any edits you don’t wish to keep. You can do this by simply right-clicking on the edit and rejecting it. Once you’ve worked your way through the entire document and you are satisfied with the edits that remain, you can choose to accept all edits from the top navigation. You’re now left with a clean, edited document - unless of course your editor left comments.

If your Kibin editor left comments, you’ll also see these in-line. They look just like highlighted portions of text and you can read the comment by simply hovering over the highlighted text. If you’re viewing edits with balloons, you will see the comments in the margins just like other edits. The only difference is that the comments will have colored balloon background rather than a white one. This makes the comments easy to distinguish.

You can use the same technique to delete comments as we did to accept or reject edits. Simply right click to delete, or use the top navigation. Regardless of which way you choose, you’ll want to delete comments before sending your paper to someone else. If you do not, they will also be able to see the comments left by your editor.

Lastly, if you plan to make any changes to your paper, make sure to turn the track changes function off. If you don’t, you’ll be tracking your own changes when you type.... like this. To turn it off, just toggle the on/off button in the top navigation so when you type, you’re typing like you normally would be.

Remember, you can always download your edited document again from your Kibin dashboard. If you lose your copy, save over changes, or simply need to access the edited version some other time, we keep it stored for you so it’s always available. That’s all for how to work with edits in track changes. Thanks for watching!