Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

chapter 5: comments, change tracking, and versions 179

chapter

5

M

ost of the time, the point of your work in Office is to create documents

you’ll eventually send or show to other people. (The exception: Keeping a

diary in Word. You know who you are.)

In the modern working world, more and more people find it valuable to be able to

mark up and revise such distributed documents. Thanks to the features described in

this chapter, you, the original author, can look over other people’s edits, incorporate

them if you agree, or delete them if you don’t. Whether you’re working with one

partner or an entire team of co-workers, Word’s collaboration features make it easy

to track the various revisions and versions of the electronically transmitted docu-

ments that you’ll inevitably create.

Comments

Often when reviewing someone else’s document, you’ll want to add comments with-

out making them a part of the text itself. You’ll have a query for the author, an idea,

a suggestion, or a joke—the kind of thing that you’d write in the margin or on a

sticky note if you were working on paper. Fortunately, the days of typing boldfaced

or bracketed comments directly into the text are over.

Adding Comments

To add just a single comment in Word, select the text that you’re commenting on

and then choose Insert→Comment (or press Option-c-A). The Comments pane

opens at the bottom of the document window, as shown in Figure 5-1, with an

insertion point at the beginning of a newly numbered comment marked with your

Comments, Change

Tracking, and Versions

180 office x for macintosh: the missing manual

initials. The text you originally selected now appears marked with a yellow high-

light. Type your comment; press F6 to return to the main (upper) pane of the docu-

ment window (or just click there).

If you plan to make more than a few comments, however, you may find it more

convenient to open the Reviewing toolbar, which lets you add a comment with a

single click. After highlighting the text you’d like to praise, criticize, or deconstruct,

proceed as follows:

1. Choose View→Toolbars→Reviewing.

The Reviewing toolbar opens.

2. Click the Insert Comment button on the Reviewing toolbar (see Figure 5-1).

Word splits your window, showing the Comments pane at the bottom.

3. Type your comment; click back in the upper pane of the document window to

return to it.

You can also press F6 to toggle between the two panes.

4. When you’re finished adding comments, close the Comments pane by clicking

its close button or by pressing Shift-Control-C.

Comments

Figure 5-1:

Top: A document showing the

highlighting that designates

comments, as well as the split-

window Comments pane.

When you point to a high-

lighted phrase, the comment

appears at your cursor tip in a

balloon.

Circled at bottom: the TRK

indicator on the window’s

status bar. Double-clicking it

represents the quickest way to

turn change tracking on and

off.

Bottom: The Reviewing toolbar.