Track changes in Word without the mess

If you've ever reviewed a Word document for someone, you know how those track changes revision marks can be distracting. If you make more than a few edits, the mishmash of different colored text, strikethroughs, and formatting notes can make it hard to see if a revised sentence has too much space between words and punctuation, duplicate or no longer needed words, or even a period at the end of it.

Fortunately, there's an easier way to edit. Click on the Review tab and look for the dropdown list to the right of the Track Changes button.

Change Final Showing Markup to Final and all of that clutter goes away! You'll view the document as it would appear with changes accepted as you edit it, only the tracking still happens in the background. When you're done, you can change it back to show the markup and see all of the changes you've suggested.

If you prefer to edit with markup visible, it's a good idea to do a final quick read-through with it hidden just to be sure the edited document doesn't contain any mistakes before passing it back to the originator.

Suzanne