How to Use Track Changes

Okay, so you have just received your manuscript back from your editor and you are freaking out over all of the crazy marks on the page! Take a deep breath! Using Microsoft Word’s Track Changes and Comments features looks scary at first, but I am here to help!

What you Received

The first thing you will notice is that there are a lot of different marks on your screen. Gray lines along the left margin, words or punctuation grayed and crossed out in the text, and different colored text added in. You will also notice words or sections of text highlighted and a dotted line leading off to the right side of the page where a whole new section has been added with comments and queries. To better show you what I am talking about I used another of my blogs to make changes and illustrate each step.

Example of a marked up manuscript. Notice the grayed and crossed out text, text added in a different color, and the highlighted red phrase attached to the comment off to the right side.

So where do you start? First, you will find the Track Changes and Comments features located on the Review tab at the top of Microsoft word. It looks like this:

Comments, Tracking, and Changes features located on the Review tab in Microsoft Word.

These features make it easy to see what changes your editor has made to your manuscript. The items that are gray with a line through them have been deleted. The new text is shown in a different color (blue on my screen, but you are able to change the color in your version of Microsoft Word). Any comments or questions your editor has are anchored to the text they refer to as seen as a kind of highlight (red on my screen), the dotted line along the top leads right over to the comment that has been left by your editor.

Accepting and Rejecting

Now that you have received your marked up manuscript and understand what the marks mean, it is now your turn to review what your editor has given you. Make sure that you review the changes carefully, this is your manuscript. You can mouse over specific changes and choose to either accept or reject them utilizing the buttons on the Review panel.

Use the highlighted Changes section in the Review tab of Microsoft Word to Accept or Reject marked up changes in your manuscript.

When you choose to accept the change, Word will remove the markup and replace the original text with the changes, while rejecting the change will remove the markup and keep the original text. Notice in the image below that I accepted the changes to spelling and punctuation errors in the first and second paragraphs, and then rejected additional words added to the third paragraph. The changes have been made and now there is no record on the screen of those changes.

Example of what it looks like after you have Accepted or Rejected markups in your manuscript. Now the changes have been made and are a part of the finished work.

Comments and Queries

Now let’s talk about queries. These are the comments you see off to the right hand side of the manuscript. You can reply to each comment directly by pressing Reply, you can also press the Resolve button to accept the change. Notice in the image below that I have done both. The comment has been grayed out to show that it is no longer active. Also notice that once I pressed the Resolve button it changed to Reopen. You can Reopen the query and reply again if necessary.

Example of what it looks like to both Reply and Resolve a comment in your manuscript. Notice that the comment is now grayed out and that the Resolve button has changed to a Reopen button.

You are also able to make new comments in the manuscript that your editor will see when they receive the project back from you. All you need to do is use your cursor to highlight the phrase, sentence, or section you are commenting on then press the New Comment button in the Review panel. Once your editor has had a chance to complete their work they will delete any comments that have been resolved throughout the text. If you receive a manuscript back with any unresolved comments you can use the Delete button to remove them once you have addressed the comment.

Use the Comments section in the Review tab to add a New Comment.

Next Steps

Hopefully you feel a little better now about approaching your marked up manuscript. It looks like a lot, but it helps ensure that you are able to see each change your editor made and review it before it becomes a part of your final manuscript. You are the owner of your work, this allows you to have full control in the end.

So here is your job:

Read through the manuscript. Then begin going through to Reject any changes you do not want. You can accept the changes you do want, but you do not need to (sometimes it is helpful to see what changes have been made when beginning a subsequent pass on the project).
Read through the manuscript again. This time focus on the queries off to the right side. If there is a suggestion you agree with, you can make changes directly in the text. If you want to respond to any of the queries you can reply.
Add any new text that you see fit. Just make sure that you have track changes turned on so that your editor can easily see what’s new.
Send your manuscript back to your editor for the next round of editing. If this was the final manuscript: clear up any questions you might have still lingering with your editor, go back through your manuscript accepting and rejecting all changes and comments, get ready to find a proofreader before pursuing publishing!