How to Track Changes in Word

When you share a contract with legal, finalize a thesis with your supervisor, or run a draft past your manager, track changes in Word is the feature that lets your edits be visible and either accepted or rejected. Most people use it once and never quite figure out how to switch it off again, or how to clear all the markup before sending the file to a client. Here's exactly how it works.

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What is Track Changes in Word?

Track Changes in Word is a built-in feature that records every insertion, deletion, formatting change, and comment made to a document while it's turned on. Each edit is shown in colored markup, with the editor's name attached. Multiple reviewers can edit the same file and Word keeps each person's changes separate. It's the standard way teams collaborate on legal contracts, manuscripts, academic papers, and any document where the version history matters.

How to turn on Track Changes in Word

To turn on Track Changes in Word, open your document and go to the Review tab. In the Tracking group, click Track Changes. Once it's on, any edit you make will appear as colored markup instead of a clean change.

Turn on (or enable Track Changes) → Review tab → Tracking group → Track Changes.

The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl + Shift + E on Windows and Cmd + Shift + E on Mac.

Tip: Click the small arrow under Track Changes to find Lock Tracking, which prevents anyone (including you) from turning it off without a password. Useful for legal documents where every edit must be preserved.

How to use Track Changes in Word

Once Track Changes is on, edit as normal. Word shows each change in colored markup: insertions appear underlined in your assigned color, deletions appear with a strikethrough or in the right margin (depending on your Markup view setting). Each change is tagged with the editor's name and timestamp.

To control how the markup is displayed, use the Display for Review dropdown in the Tracking group:

• Simple Markup: shows clean text with a vertical bar in the margin where edits exist.
• All Markup: shows every change inline (most useful for reviewing).
• No Markup: shows the document as it would look with all changes accepted.
• Original: shows the document as it was before any changes.

For collaborative documents, All Markup during editing and No Markup before sending is the standard workflow.

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How to accept Track Changes in Word

To accept Track Changes in Word, click into the change and press the Accept button in the Changes group of the Review tab. To accept all changes in the document at once, click the arrow under Accept and choose Accept All Changes. The document then reflects every edit as if Track Changes had never been on.

To reject a change instead, use the Reject button right next to Accept. The change disappears and the original text comes back.

Tip: Review changes one at a time with the Previous and Next buttons in the Changes group. It's faster than scrolling and ensures nothing is missed.

How to turn off Track Changes in Word

To turn off Track Changes in Word, go back to the Review tab and click Track Changes once more. The button is a toggle, so a second click switches it off. Any future edits will now appear as normal text, but changes already in the document remain as markup until you accept or reject them.

A common mistake: people turn off Track Changes thinking it removes the existing markup. It doesn't. The toggle just stops new tracking; old changes stay until you accept or reject them.

Turn off → Review tab → Track Changes (toggle off).

How to remove Track Changes in Word

Turning off Track Changes doesn’t remove existing markup; to fully remove Track Changes in Word, you have to accept or reject every change first. The fastest way is to open the Accept dropdown in the Changes group of the Review tab and choose Accept All Changes. The document then looks clean, with no underlines, strikethroughs, or margin bars.

Comments are separate: if your document has comments alongside tracked changes, you'll also need to delete them. Right-click any comment and choose Delete Comment, or use Delete, then Delete All Comments in Document from the Comments group.

Always re-save the file under a new name (e.g., "_clean.docx") after accepting all changes if you want to keep the original tracked version.

There's no built-in undo for "remove all markup" once the file is closed.

Key takeaways

Track Changes in Word records every edit during collaborative review. Turn it on from Review → Track Changes (or Ctrl+Shift+E), use Display for Review to control how markup appears, accept or reject changes one by one or all at once, and toggle the feature off when editing is done. To fully remove markup, accept or reject every change rather than just switching the feature off.

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