Accepting & Rejecting Changes In Track Changes for Word

When working with an editor, it is vital that you know how to use Word's Track Changes feature. It is an industry standard you will want to get comfortable with if you intend to publish traditionally. This is a follow up post to my Word's Track Changes Basic Tutorial. Today we're covering accepting and rejecting changes. 

When you receive your edited manuscript from your editor, open it in Word and double check to make sure it is showing all changes (see the post above). As long as "All Markup" is chosen, you will see suggested deletions and additions as line edits in the manuscript, and comments from your editor in the right margin. If you don't see these changes that means "All Markup" isn't on and you need to refer to the post above to turn it on. 

You will need to accept or reject all changes. To do so, make sure you are on the "Review" tab (top of the page). Under the "Changes" group you will see "Accept" (marked with a green check mark) and "Reject" (marked with a red X) options. If you click the drop down arrow beside each, you'll see options for "Accept And Move to Next", "Accept This Change", "Accept All Changes", "Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking" (same type of options for "Reject"). Use the "Accept and Move to the Next" option. 

Anything new you add will show up in a different color text and be underlined (The color doesn't matter as long as it isn't black and is underlined. If it's black and not underlined, it means you don't have Track Changes on correctly.). It showing up underlined and in a color other than black means your editor will be able to go straight to the new additions via Track Changes and see them rather than having to slog through the entire manuscript again. If it isn't showing up underlined in a different color, do not manually underline it and change the color. Failure to show up as such means Track Changes is not on properly and must be turned on. 

The acceptions and rejections you make will "disappear" by turning into black text once again. For acceptions this is fine because these are changes you editor has suggested and approves of. If you are rejecting a word choice or addition they recommended, you may want to put a comment in the margins to let them know you rejected it and why, because the rejection will disappear and no longer be trackable. You don't need to tell your editor about every small thing you reject (unless you find yourself rejecting a lot), but if you are rejecting grammar changes they recommended, you'll want to talk to them about it.

Next time we'll talk about commenting.