When I return your manuscript, the changes I have made will be shown in a special view that MS Word calls "Track Changes". If you haven't worked with this before, it can be quite daunting. But don't fear! Follow these instructions to work through the tracked changes as swiftly and painlessly as possible.

The steps below are inspired by this excellent guide. If you're familiar with tracked changes, you can consult the short version as a cheat sheet. If you need detailed step-by-step instructions, please read the long version.

  1. Turn off the Revisions Pane.
  2. Change the colour of the edits.
  3. Experiment with ‘Simple Markup’ (gives a ‘final’ view of the document) and ‘All Markup’ (shows all the changes).
  4. Action any suggestions/queries from the comments (don’t worry about anything else).
  5. Read through and fix/reject the changes you do not agree with.
  6. Accept all changes and turn off tracking.
  7. Update the table of contents, etc.

All the tools you need are on the Review tab:

It might look slightly different on your machine, depending on operating system, version of Office, screen size, etc.

 

 

 

1.         I would suggest starting by turning off the Revisions Pane, if it is on (Step 1 on the link above)

Click ‘Reviewing Pane’ to toggle the pane on or off. In a document with lots of revisions, this may take some time, depending on the speed of your computer.

 

 

2.         Then, I highly recommend changing the colour of edits (it’s her Step 4) so that the deletions fade into the background (experiment with colours that work for you).

Click the little pop-out (dialog launcher) on the Tracking group.

Choose Advanced Options… in the dialog box that appears.

These are the two you want to play with. I have mine set at Classic Blue for insertions and Gray-25% for deletions. This is what it looks like:

Much better!

 

 

3.         Experiment with viewing the document in ‘All Markup’ and ‘Simple Markup’ modes. You will find that the one mode works better for certain steps below, while the other mode is more suited to different steps. (Simple Markup is not the same as clearing/accepting all changes. They are still there in the background, but Word is showing you your document with the changes incorporated, as it would appear if you were to accept all changes at this point.)

 

4.         Deal with the comments first (delete them or mark them as resolved as you go) – do not worry about any of my other changes in the text at this point

With your cursor flashing inside a comment, simply click the Delete icon on the Comments group.

(Alternatively, you can right-click on the comment bubble and then choose ‘Delete Comment’ from the menu that pops up)

OR you can click Resolve if you want to keep the comment but not delete it outright. Word greys it out and collapses it when you click away from it:

 

 

5.         Read through and fix/reject the changes you do not agree with (some of it will appear messy – especially the smaller changes such as punctuation or single words added/deleted). Again, resist the temptation to accept these as you go. At this point, ONLY focus on rejecting changes you don’t agree with (or changing them slightly)

Simply click the Reject button on the Review tab.

 

Tip: Switch to Simple Markup view (step 3) to see that you are not leaving out spaces or adding extra spaces or punctuation where they should not be. Then switch back to All Markup to find the next big revision.

 

6.         Your document should now contain any edits you’ve revised, as well as all my edits that you agree with. You should accept all changes and turn off tracking (using Word’s function to do this with two clicks) and clear remaining comments and edits (again, delete all comments with the option in two clicks).

Graphical user interface, application, Word Description automatically generated

To delete all comments, click the little arrow BELOW the delete icon (on the Review ribbon), then choose ‘Delete All Comments in Document’

Similarly, to accept all changes, choose the little arrow BELOW Accept, then choose ‘Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking’


The aim is to end up with a clean document, free of tracked changes and comments.

 

7.         Remember to update table of contents/page numbers once you have a final version, as the pagination may have changed. It’s better to run this step after accepting all changes, as updating the TOC is marked as a big change (the whole thing deleted and the whole thing reinserted).

(Last updated 21 September 2025)