Work Smarter Not Harder: Track Changes, Part 1

Track Changes is a Microsoft Word feature that allows the editor (whether you are editing your own work or another's work) to visibly track every change made to the document without clicking anything extra.

What do I mean by clicking anything extra? For example, if you highlight changes manually, or change the color of the text, you will have to change the color every time you start again.

Also, highlighting or changing the text color does not allow you to do automatic strike through and replacements. In fact, the very reason track changes is so convenient is that once you are done, you can either accept all changes, or accept and deny them individually. This allows you complete control over changes others make.

You can even have different users, and assign different colors to track individual changes. The default color is red, which stands out nicely.

Using track changes may also be used in conjunction with comments, which also has the multiple users function, but, again, comments are not as efficient, as changes will still need to be made to the document after reading the comments, and then the comments that have been addressed will need to be deleted.

If the file is saved with two different version names, you can keep a copy of the file as it is before, during, and after the changes; if you need to look for specific changes later, it will be easier to see what you have done.

Now that you are aware of this function, in a future post, I will discuss the more technical features of how to actually use it, with some screen shots.