Track Changes: Electronic Editing Made Easy

1. Track Changes:Electronic Editing Made Easy An Instruction Manual By Eme Crawford & Elizabeth Smith

2. Why Track Changes? Microsoftee Track Changes is designed to make commenting on students’ papers and collaborative work easier. With Track Changes you, as a reviewer, can electronically add comments and insert, delete, or highlight passages in a Word document just as you would with a hard copy. No more lugging around dozens of essays to grade. No more misplaced papers. No more ink blots or coffee spills to explain to your students. When you use Microsoftee Track Changes, electronic convenience is at your fingertips. With Track Changes you even have the pedagogical advantage of seeing how your students have edited their work. The accept change/reject change feature will encourage your students to take an additional look at their writing. While students may sometime overlook written comments on their essays, they are sure to see inserted words, deleted phrases, and comment boxes through Track Changes. This flipbook will introduce you to just a few of the editing innovations made possible through Track Changes. Enjoy!

3. Getting Started* To activate Track Changes: • Open the Word document you wish to revise • Select “Tools” from the top toolbar • Click on “Track Changes” The icon on the lower toolbar will indicate that Track Changes is activated: * All directions are for Microsoftee Word 2002.

4. Inserting and Deleting Text Once you activate Track Changes, inserting and deleting text is easy! As you type, your comments will be underlined and appear in red. When you delete a passage, it will be struck through with a red line. Insert Text Delete Text

5. Comments Track Changes also accommodates revisions without changing the text in the document. The passage being commented upon is highlighted and the comments are shown in balloons. To activate the comment box in an opened document you are already editing: • Select “Insert” • Choose “Comment” From that point, you can type your revision in the following format: *Note*: With multiple reviewers, Track Changes will list the specific reviewer by each suggestion.

6. Responding to Revisions Once you have commented upon the document, the author can right click on the suggestion and either reject or accept it:

7. Protecting Documents To ensure the security of documents containing Track Changes you can protect them with the following steps: • Choose “Tools” • Go to “Options” • Click on “Security Tab” • Enter Password Information (a dialogue box will pop up to verify information) • Select “OK”

8. Merging Documents When comments and changes from several reviewers are made, Track Changes allow you to merge these comments into one document. To merge documents: • Open “Tools” • Click on “Compare Documents” • Select the Arrow Next to “Merge” • Click “Merge Into Current Document”

9. Track Changes Options To access Track Changes options use the following method: • Select “Tools” • Go to “Options” • Click on “Track Changes” tab There you have a menu to edit your mark-ups and choices you can make about where to place your comments.

10. The Convenience of Track Changes As you have seen, Track Changes is an easy and effective way to edit Word documents. We at Microsoftee encourage you to contact us for a complete User’s Manual or experiment for yourself with the other Track Changes options. We hope this technology enhances your editing process for both you and your students.