Word Track Changes and Document Review: A Professional Editing Workflow

The Case for Structured Document Review

Anyone who has exchanged documents by email and ended up with files named “contract_v3_FINAL_revised_JK_ACTUAL_FINAL.docx” knows how quickly collaborative editing descends into chaos without a structured process. Microsoft Word’s Track Changes feature exists precisely to solve this problem. It creates a complete, visible record of every edit made to a document — insertions, deletions, formatting changes, and comments — and allows authors to accept or reject each change individually. It is the standard review tool in legal, academic, publishing, and corporate environments for good reason.

This guide covers Track Changes from first principles through to the professional-level techniques that distinguish efficient reviewers from those who fight their tools. We will look at how to enable and configure tracking, navigate and resolve changes, manage multiple reviewers, and use comments effectively as part of a complete review workflow. These features work across Office 2024 Professional Plus, Office 2021, and Office 2019 on Windows.

Enabling and Configuring Track Changes

Switching Tracking On and Off

Track Changes is toggled via Review > Track Changes > Track Changes, or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + E. When active, the Track Changes button is highlighted in the ribbon. Every subsequent edit is recorded with the reviewer’s name and a timestamp.

The reviewer name shown in tracked changes comes from your Office account. To verify or change it, go to File > Options > General and check the “Personalise your copy of Microsoft Office” section. Setting a clear, professional name matters when documents circulate widely — “User” or “PC” is not helpful attribution.

Locking Track Changes

In a managed review process, you may need to ensure that reviewers cannot turn off tracking and edit silently. Word allows you to lock Track Changes with a password:

1. Go to Review > Track Changes > Lock Tracking.
2. Enter and confirm a password.
3. Click OK.

With tracking locked, Track Changes cannot be disabled without the password, and the toggle button in the ribbon is greyed out. This is particularly useful when sending documents for external review where you need to ensure a complete audit trail of all changes made.

Understanding the Display Options

Word offers four different views of a tracked document, accessible from the Display for Review dropdown in the Review tab:

• All Markup — Shows all tracked changes and comments inline or in balloons in the margin. This is the standard review view.
• Simple Markup — Shows a clean version of the document with change indicators (vertical red bars in the margin) rather than the full markup. Clicking a bar toggles the detailed view for that section.
• No Markup — Shows the document as it will look if all changes are accepted. Useful for reading the proposed final version.
• Original — Shows the document as it was before any tracked changes were made. Useful for comparison.

None of these views accepts or rejects changes — they only change how the document appears on screen. The changes remain recorded until explicitly accepted or rejected.

Showing Specific Types of Markup

Under Review > Show Markup, you can filter which types of changes are visible:

• Comments — toggle comment balloons
• Ink — handwritten annotations (on touchscreen devices)
• Insertions and Deletions — the core text changes
• Formatting — font, size, spacing, and style changes
• Specific People — show only changes from selected reviewers

Filtering by specific people is invaluable when a document has been through multiple reviewers and you want to focus on one person’s comments at a time.

The Reviewing Pane

Open the Reviewing Pane via Review > Reviewing Pane. It can be displayed vertically (to the left of the document) or horizontally (below it). The pane shows every tracked change and comment in a scrollable list, with the reviewer name, date, time, and change content. For documents with a large number of changes, the pane is often easier to navigate than scrolling through balloons in the document itself.

A summary at the top of the pane shows the total counts of insertions, deletions, formatting changes, comments, and other markup types. This gives you an at-a-glance sense of how extensively a document has been edited before diving into the changes.

Accepting and Rejecting Changes

Resolving tracked changes is the core task of the review stage. Word gives you granular control over this process.

Individual Changes

Click on any tracked change to select it, then use the buttons in the Review tab:

• Accept — incorporates the change into the document and removes the markup
• Reject — reverts the change and removes the markup
• Accept and Move to Next — accepts the current change and jumps to the next one automatically

You can also right-click any tracked change for a context menu with Accept and Reject options, which is often faster when working with a mouse.

Accepting or Rejecting All Changes

The dropdown arrows beneath the Accept and Reject buttons offer bulk options:

• Accept All Changes — finalises all tracked changes in one action
• Reject All Changes — reverts all changes
• Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking — finalises everything and turns off Track Changes

Use “Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking” when you have finished the review process and want to produce a clean final document. Never share a final document with tracked changes still embedded — they are visible to anyone who opens the file and switches to All Markup view, even if the document appears clean.

Accepting Changes from Specific Reviewers

In a multi-reviewer scenario, you may want to accept all changes from a trusted subject-matter expert while reviewing other contributors’ changes individually. Filter by reviewer in Show Markup > Specific People, then use Accept All Changes — Word will only accept the visible (filtered) changes, leaving other reviewers’ markup intact.

Using Comments Effectively

Comments are distinct from tracked changes — they are annotations that ask questions, explain edits, or flag issues without altering the document text itself. Insert a comment with Ctrl + Alt + M or via Review > New Comment.

Threaded Comments and Replies

In Office 2019 and later, comments support threaded replies. Click the Reply button within any comment balloon to add a response. This creates a conversation thread anchored to that specific part of the document — enormously useful for resolving specific points without a separate email chain.

Resolving Comments

Once a point raised in a comment has been addressed, right-click the comment and choose Resolve Comment. The comment remains visible but is greyed out, showing that the issue has been dealt with without losing the audit trail. This is preferable to simply deleting comments, which removes the history entirely.

Using @mentions in Comments

In Office 2021 and 2024, you can @mention a colleague in a comment to send them an email notification and assign the comment to them. Type @ and start typing the person’s name — Word will suggest contacts from your address book. The mentioned person receives an email with a link directly to the comment. This bridges the gap between in-document review and external communication.

Comparing and Combining Documents

Track Changes works best when all reviewers edit the same circulated document. In practice, this does not always happen — you may receive two independently edited versions of the same original. Word’s Compare and Combine features handle this.

Comparing Two Versions

1. Go to Review > Compare > Compare.
2. Select the original document and the revised document from the file picker dialogs.
3. Click OK. Word creates a new document showing all differences as tracked changes.

The comparison result treats the original as the baseline and the revised document as the proposed final version. All differences appear as tracked changes, which you can then accept or reject as normal.

Combining Multiple Reviewers’ Edits

If you sent a document to three reviewers simultaneously and received three separately edited copies back:

1. Go to Review > Compare > Combine.
2. Select one reviewed document as the “Original” and a second as the “Revised” version.
3. Click OK. Word merges the changes.
4. Repeat the process, using the merged result as the new original and the third reviewed document as revised.

This approach preserves each reviewer’s attributed changes in the combined document.

Managing Document Protection for Review

Beyond locking Track Changes, Word’s document protection tools can restrict reviewers to only commenting, with no ability to edit the body text at all.

1. Go to Review > Protect > Restrict Editing.
2. Under “Editing restrictions”, tick “Allow only this type of editing in the document” and select Comments from the dropdown.
3. Click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection and set a password.

This is the appropriate setting for sending a document to a client for feedback — they can leave comments anywhere but cannot alter the underlying text.

Professional Workflow: From Draft to Final

A well-structured document review process typically looks like this:

1. Author creates draft — saved as a .docx file with a clear naming convention and version number.
2. Track Changes enabled and locked — author turns on tracking before sending, optionally locks it with a password.
3. Document circulated for review — ideally to one reviewer at a time to avoid conflicting edits on the same file. If simultaneous review is needed, the Combine feature handles reconciliation.
4. Reviewer returns marked document — with tracked changes and comments. They should not accept any changes themselves.
5. Author reviews changes — working through each change using Accept/Reject, and addressing each comment.
6. Final document produced — all changes accepted, all comments resolved or deleted, Track Changes off, document inspected for hidden metadata before distribution.

Inspecting a Document for Hidden Information

Before sharing a final document externally, use the Document Inspector to check for and remove hidden metadata, tracked changes that are not visible in Simple Markup view, comments, and personal information:

1. Go to File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document.
2. Select the types of content to inspect and click Inspect.
3. Remove any findings you do not want included in the distributed document.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Track Changes

• Ctrl + Shift + E — Toggle Track Changes on/off
• Ctrl + Alt + M — Insert new comment
• Alt + Shift + C — Close the Reviewing Pane
• Next change: Review tab > Next (no default keyboard shortcut, but assignable)
• Accept change: Assignable — go to File > Options > Customise Ribbon > Keyboard Shortcuts > Customise, find AcceptChangesSelected and assign a key combination such as Alt + A

Which Version of Office Do You Need?

Track Changes, Comments, Compare, and Combine are available in all versions of Microsoft Office. The @mentions feature in comments requires Office 2021 or later and an active Microsoft account. Threaded comment replies were introduced in Office 2019. For the most complete review experience, Office 2024 Professional Plus is available for €34.99 — a one-off purchase that gives you Word’s full feature set permanently, without a subscription. Office 2021 Professional Plus covers all the core review workflow features for the same price, while Office 2019 Professional Plus at €26.99 is the right choice if budget is the primary concern.

Mastering Track Changes is one of the highest-return skills available in Microsoft Word. Once the workflow becomes second nature, you will wonder how you ever managed document review without it.