How to Change Tracking in Word: A Complete Guide to Track Changes

Microsoft Word's Track Changes feature is one of the most powerful collaboration tools in any office software suite. Whether you're editing a colleague's report, reviewing a legal document, or revising your own draft with a clear history of what changed, understanding how to control tracking — turning it on, off, and configuring how it behaves — makes a real difference in how smoothly document collaboration works.

What Is Track Changes in Word?

Track Changes is a built-in Word feature that records every edit made to a document — insertions, deletions, formatting changes, and comments. Each change is marked visually (typically with colored markup), and the document retains both the original and the revised text simultaneously until someone accepts or rejects the changes.

This matters most in collaborative environments: legal teams, academic writing, publishing workflows, and corporate document review all rely heavily on it. When multiple people edit the same document, Track Changes creates an auditable trail of who changed what and when.

How to Turn Track Changes On or Off

In Microsoft Word (Desktop — Windows and Mac)

1. Open your document in Word.
2. Click the Review tab in the ribbon.
3. Click Track Changes in the Tracking group.
4. When the button appears highlighted or pressed, tracking is active. Click it again to turn it off.

Keyboard shortcut:Ctrl + Shift + E (Windows) or Command + Shift + E (Mac) toggles Track Changes on and off instantly.

In Microsoft Word for the Web

1. Open the document in your browser via OneDrive or SharePoint.
2. Select the Review tab.
3. Click Track Changes — the toggle switches it on or off.

Note that Word for the Web has a slightly reduced feature set compared to the desktop app. Some formatting change tracking options may not be available in the browser version.

How to Change How Tracking Looks and Behaves 🎨

Word gives you significant control over the display of tracked changes, which is separate from whether tracking is active.

Changing the Markup View

In the Review tab, look for the Display for Review dropdown. It typically offers four options:

Switching between these views does not accept or reject changes — it only changes how they're displayed on screen. This is useful when you want to read the document naturally without markup clutter, while still preserving the change history underneath.

Changing What Types of Changes Are Tracked

You can control which edits Word flags. In the Review tab:

1. Click the dropdown arrow beneath the Track Changes button.
2. Select Track Changes Options (desktop) or Advanced Options.
3. Here you can configure whether Word tracks insertions and deletions, formatting changes, moves, and table edits separately.

This is particularly useful when formatting-only changes (like someone toggling bold on a word) clutter the review process and you only care about content edits.

Changing the Color and Markup Style

In Advanced Track Changes Options, you can set whether each author's changes appear in a specific color or whether Word assigns colors automatically per reviewer. You can also change whether deletions appear as strikethroughs, hidden text, or are shown in balloons in the margin.

Accepting and Rejecting Changes

Tracked changes don't just sit there forever — the review process involves accepting or rejecting them to finalize the document.

• Accept Change — applies the edit permanently and removes the markup.
• Reject Change — reverts the edit back to the original text.

Both options are in the Review tab. You can act on changes one at a time or use Accept All / Reject All to process everything at once.

⚠️ Accepting all changes without reviewing them individually is a common mistake. In sensitive documents — contracts, academic submissions, HR materials — unreviewed tracked changes or hidden comments can remain embedded in the file even when they're not visible on screen.

Locking Track Changes So Others Can't Disable It

If you're sending a document for review and need to ensure tracking stays on, Word allows you to lock Track Changes with a password.

1. Click the dropdown under Track Changes in the Review tab.
2. Select Lock Tracking.
3. Set a password.

With locking active, reviewers can still edit the document, but they cannot turn off tracking or accept/reject changes without the password.

Variables That Affect How Tracking Works for You

Not every Word user experiences Track Changes the same way. Several factors shape how useful — or complicated — it becomes in practice:

• Version of Word: Features available in Microsoft 365 (subscription) differ from perpetual licenses like Office 2019 or 2021. The desktop app consistently offers more control than the web version.
• Operating system: Mac and Windows Word are functionally similar but occasionally differ in menu layout and keyboard shortcuts.
• Document sharing method: Documents shared via OneDrive or SharePoint support real-time co-authoring with live tracked changes. Emailed attachments pass tracking history passively.
• Number of reviewers: With many authors, the color-coded markup can become visually dense. Filtering changes by a specific reviewer (available in the Show Markup menu) becomes important.
• Document format: Saving as .docx fully supports Track Changes. Older .doc formats or exports to PDF or plain text behave differently — PDF exports, for example, can either show markup or show the clean accepted version depending on your export settings.

The Spectrum of Use Cases

A solo writer using Track Changes to review their own edits has a very different experience than a legal team with five reviewers cycling through a contract. Someone working entirely in the browser on Word for the Web operates with fewer configuration options than someone using a fully installed Microsoft 365 desktop application. Someone sharing documents via email introduces version control risks that SharePoint-based collaboration avoids.

How you configure tracking — what you display, what you lock, what types of changes you monitor — depends entirely on the kind of document work you're doing and the environment you're working in. 🖊️