Clean your Word documents from all the changes you do not wish to be tracked!
By Henry Quill | October 26, 2023Microsoft Word is a very user-friendly tool that supports collaborative document editing. Usually, in any organization, the whole team has access to a particular document. So, it becomes important to keep a record of all the changes made to it by you or other members, until finalized, which is done by the Track Changes feature in MS Word. But, here’s the twist, when finally you’re ready to submit a file and you do not want all those revisions highlighted. How to save a clean copy of a Word document after track changes, without markups and comments? Read further to find out!
Table of Contents
As the name suggests, Track Changes allows users to make reviews, edits, and revisions to a document while preserving a record of every change. When it’s turned on, any insertions, deletions, or formatting modifications are highlighted, and comments can be added to provide context. It becomes more useful for individuals to suggest, check, and accept or reject changes. Not just that, you can also use the Compare feature to generate a clean copy and a Track Changes copy for reference purposes.
However, even though it’s important for transparency and accountability purposes if you want to save a clean & polished copy once the edits are complete, here’s what you need to do:
1. Open the file with Track Changes enabled.
2. Move to the Review tab and click on the drop-down arrow next to Tracking.
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3. In the Track Changes Options popup window, uncheck Comments, Ink, Insertions and Deletions, and Formatting.
4. Expand the drop-down menu next to Balloons in All Markup view show and select Nothing from it.
5. Click on OK.
All the highlighted modifications will be removed and you can save this clean copy of the Word file.
Markups indicate changes, suggestions, or comments made by someone during the editing and reviewing process of any specific Microsoft Word document. You can follow the steps below to save a file without markups:
1. In the file, move to the Review tab.
2. Expand the All Markup drop-down menu, and select No Markup.
Note: No Markup only temporarily hides the changes & comments and all of it will be visible again the next time you or someone else opens the file.
3. Now, move to the File tab, and click on Options in the left sidebar.
4. Click on Trust Center, followed by Trust Center Settings.
5. Move to the Privacy Options tab.
6. Under Document-specific settings, uncheck the box next to Make hidden markup visible when opening or saving.
7. Click on OK to save the changes.
You can now save the document with no markups visible.
If you want to approve all the suggested edits and revisions made to the document, Word offers you a feature to Accept Changes directly. Once accepted, the modifications become a permanent part of the document and all associated markups are removed. Follow the steps below:
1. Open the file and navigate to the Review tab.
2. Click on the change you want to approve and then click on Accept.
Note: You can click on Next or Previous to go through all changes one by one and accept them.
However, if you want to accept all at once, follow the steps:
3. Click on the downward pointing arrow under Accept.
4. Select Accept All Changes from the drop-down menu.
If you want to stop tracking, select Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking.
If you want to turn off Track Changes for a file, here are the steps to follow:
1. In the file, go to the Review tab.
2. In the Tracking section, expand Track Changes and click on Track Changes again to disable it.
Now any further changes you make in the document will not be recorded and highlighted anymore. However, this would not remove the old changes made to the doc with Track Changes turned on. Those will still be visible until accepted or rejected.
If you want to enable Track Changes once again in the file, follow the steps:
1. Go to the Review tab.
2. Now in the Tracking section, click on Track Changes, followed by Track Changes again to enable it.
All the highlighted changes that haven’t been accepted, rejected, or removed will appear again.
We hope our guide helped you save a clean copy of a Word document after Track Changes. If you have any queries or suggestions for us, do let us know in the comments section. Stay tuned to TechCult for more such tech and app-related information.
