Track Changes in Microsoft Word

TRACK CHANGES

In Microsoft Word there is an option available called track changes. This is most helpful for the times when you write something (a school paper, a book, an article, your Christmas letter) and you want someone to proofread it for you. It allows the proofreader to make changes like crossing out or adding words and put comments on your document without really changing anything.

When they return it to you there are red marks that need to be approved or rejected. It allows you to stay in control of the document while also getting feedback from someone else.

Let's look at it step by step.

1. I am starting with a document that I copied from the internet somewhere.
2. I have to turn Track Changes on.
3. I am going to put all of the different types of edits into the document so you can see what it looks like.
4. You can see that everything is marked in Green or red and on the side there is an explanation of what was changed.
5. Now, you as the author can choose which changes to keep and which to reject. First open the ribbon called Review and look for Accept/Reject.
6. Now you can click on each one of these changes and choose Accept or Reject. If it is marked Accept the change is made. If you choose Reject the mark goes away and the text returns to normal. There is a small red mark on the left side that shows where a change has been made. If you think you are done, but there are still lines on the right side click on the line to see what is changed.

Like everything else it makes more sense when you do it. If you are interested why not take a piece of text and try it out?

Things to do with Word You Might not Know About

Microsoft Word is probably the software that almost everyone uses and associates with using a computer. Microsoft Word 2013 adds some important features. You can try these features on other versions, but they may only work on MS Word 2013.



Only in Microsoft Word 2013 - Edit and save PDFs directly in Word. If you have a .pdf document that you want to edit first open up MS Word 2013 (you have to upgrade if you have an earlier version). Then choose FILE>OPEN and find the .pdf. It will open in Word and you will be able to edit it and then Save As .pdf. It will save your changes!

These are TABS

If you like using TABS to switch between windows in a browser, now you can do the same thing with different documents that you have open at the same time. Just download this free add on. It will work with older versions of Word. If you have Microsoft Word 2013 you will have to purchase a $25 copy.





Use different Key Strokes or clicks to easily select different amounts of text. Triple Clicking anywhere in a paragraph selects the whole paragraph. Control Clicking anywhere in a sentence will select the whole sentence. Holding the Alt Key and Dragging your mouse over any rectangular space will select the specific text that you drag over.

Microsoft Sky Drive is the place that Microsoft has created for saving things online. If you have images saved in this location and are using Word 2013 you can choose pictures directly from the Sky Drive to put into your document.

Have you ever seen a document sample with "lorum ipsum...... " latin words? Those are place holder words which help you to visualize what a document will look like after you replace those words with your own. With Word 2013 you can generate your own placeholder text. When you are in a document type =rand(p,l) and press enter. The p stands for paragraphs, so you put a number instead of the p that indicates how many paragraphs you want to generate. The l (L) stands for how many lines you want the paragraph to be.

Words dictionary - You may not realize that when Word does a spell check it is checking words that are already in its dictionary. If you want more words in the dictionary you can add them one by one. If you type in a word that the program thinks is misspelled, but you know it is correct you can right click the word and choose "add to dictionary". That word will be added and it will not show up as misspelled any more. You can also download Bing's Dictionary for Word 2013. If you have Word 2013 you can go to this link to download the add on. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/store/bing-dictionary-english-WA103136166.aspx?redir=0

Toggle between word cases - It often happens to me that I leave my caps lock on and find I am typing all in caps when I did not mean to be. The other side is that sometimes I am done typing, but decide that a word should be Capitalized or in all lower case. After highlighting the words you can just click SHIFT and F3 at the same time and it will toggle between ALL CAPS, Camel Case (Where The First Letter Of Every Word Is Capitalized) and lowercase.

Recover Unsaved Documents - Have you ever experienced the horror of closing a document you were working on and then realizing that you had not saved it? I think we all have.  In Word 2013 click "File" and then "info" and then "manage version" and you will have a choice to "recover unsaved documents". Click on that and then find the one you want to save and do that right away!

These ideas come from:

http://www.cmitsolutions.com/corporate/blog/10-tips-tricks-apps-and-add-ins-supercharge-microsoft-word#list

Editing Toolbars in Microsoft Word

I often use my favorite tool (word wrapping ) when creating a document.  It allows me to line up text to images in the way that I want them to look. It is in the picture toolbar. I find it by going to VIEW-TOOLBARS-PICTURE. It is part of the picture toolbar, but did not show up most of the time when I used MS Word. I had to click on the little arrow at the end of the toolbar that let me know that there were MORE tools and then find it.

Today I decided that there must be a way to edit the toolbar so that I don't have to look for the wrap text tool every time. There must be a way that I can add it to the toolbar where I can see it all of the time. I did find out how:

1. Click on VIEW-TOOLBARS and choose CUSTOMIZE.

2. A window opens. Click on the top where it says COMMAND.

3. When the COMMAND window is open you can drag and drop tools from the list of tools right to the menu OR drag tools off of the menu on the toolbar and they disappear.

4. In the Customize window you will see two choices. First is the Categories. When you click on each category a new list of commands appears on the right side.

5. It took a while, but I found the word wrap tool under the category of Drawing. I was then able to drag it right onto the toolbar where I wanted it to be!

BEFORE

AFTER

I have a lot of tools on the toolbar that I never use, so I would like to drag them off and then I have tools that I use often and I want them to be easy to find. Here is the before and after pictures of my toolbar!






It is amazing how many tools there are!  So many possibilities!

BONUS INFORMATION

One added tip: You can resize and move your toolbars anywhere you want on your computer screen, so that they are best for you.  You just need to be able to drag two different things.

This is the bottom corner blown up so you can see it better.

1. The right bottom corner, which looks like a folded corner-look for the three little diagonal lines.

2. The left side bar. The side bar always has a circle at the top and what looks like little dots under it.


3. To make the bar into a long skinny bar that you can put on the left or right side of your screen drag the corner until it is a line and then drag the top until it is where you want it to show up.

You can delete a toolbar by putting your arrow on top of the circle. It will turn red and then you click.

If a toolbar is missing you can choose VIEW> TOOLBARS and look for the toolbar that you want to show up and it will reappear.