As part of my job I’m responsible for helping produce an MS Word document that goes out across our entire company. Before I send it out I often have to make many corrections and amendments, some of which relate to simple mistakes, but there are others that relate to sensitive or unnecessary information.
My question is this - how do I stop someone seeing all these corrections if they already have the “Track Changes” option switched on in their version of MS Word? Is there any way to completely hide all the corrections in a finished Word document so that no-one will ever be able to see them, even with the “Track Changes” feature enabled?
My boss thinks this is an IT question but if I can figure it out first (by cheating and asking you guys!), I’ll score major brownie points…
Accept all your changes and save the document before you send it.
Then they will only see any changes they make.
A document should never be sent with unaccepted changes unless it’s for those changes to be reviewed, sicne it looks dirty and is hard to read; if you want to have a document history, use version numbers.
Thanks for the quick response - how do I accept the changes then? I normally just edit the document as I need to and then save it normally before sending it on to someone else. I have the Track Changes option switched off on my copy of word so once I make the corrections - that’s it - I don’t see them again.
Turn Track Changes on again, and one of the options on the track changes palette (and menu) is “Accept all changes.” If you don’t want to see edits while you’re making them, you can choose from the same palette whether or not you want to see “Final” or “Final showing Markup.” “Final” won’t show the markup, it will look the same as it normally does.
It’s close to Track Changes, in the same menu… lemme look it up…
OK, apparently some genius (at least in my version of The Thing) decided that no menu item was needed. You should have the Track Changes toolbar (i.e., some icons used for these function). Mine has a drop-down saying “Final Showing Markup”, then a sign that says “Show”, several icons that with a lot of imagination you can tell look like pieces of yellow paper (post-its?) with pencils and other symbols. One of those symbols is a blue checkmark, which is again a drop-down: one of the options in the drop-down is “accept all”.
Also, if you’re concerned about people finding remnants of sensitive information in the document, you should ALWAYS turn off the option to “allow fast saves.”
First of all, a “fast save” is not noticeably faster on a modern machine, and worse, “fast save” leaves the original document in place and just appends a list of changes. Opening such a document is actually slower, since it has to re-apply the list of changes (that’s also why documents get BIGGER when you delete content sometimes).
The “old” information isn’t visible in Word, but something as simple as opening it in Notepad might* show all the older information.
I say “might,” because Word will eventually re-concentrate things of it’s own accord, even with fast save turned on, but you can’t rely on when or if it will choose to do so.
Microsoft released a free add-in a couple of years ago that should do exactly what you want. Just search for “remove hidden data tool” and you’ll find it.
I hope a hint regarding a free and “official” tool doesn’t violate any board rules.
If you tell us what version of Word you’re using we can provide additional help.
For 2003, go to Tools >> Options >> Security & check the box near the bottom labeled “Warn before printing, saving, or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments”.
Per the built-in help, that feature “Prompts you to review tracked changes or comments before saving or distributing a document. Do this to minimize your risk of accidentally sharing private information”
I’m adding to Nava’s comment - to really bullet-proof your document, take your final copy, accept all changes, then copy everything except the last paragraph mark into a brand new document. Save that new document (use the same file name, if you like, otherwise use a new one).
The bolded part is important - do not simply copy everything; you need to copy everything *except *that last paragraph mark. (To show paragraph marks, click the paragraph marker button on the toolbar, between the document map icon and zoom drop-down. Looks like a backwards, stylized P). Word stores a lot of overhead information invisibly in this last paragraph (such as track changes information and other formatting data). This is the stuff you don’t want, so leave it behind. (And this is why leaving it reduces file size, Nava.)
I’m not sure I completely understand what you’re concened about. It sounds to me that you’re making the changes with tracked changes turned off. Someone with a previous version of the document will be able to compare the two to see differences between the original and the new version. There isn’t much you can do to change that. If that’s not your concern, and you’re worried that that someone will be able to reverse engineer your changes (such as what you would see by continually clicking “undo”), then don’t fret tracked changes. Enabling it does not allow someone to recover your previous edits to the document. It will only track any changes that person makes to the document.
I’ll be trying it out soon and will let you know if I run into any problems.