Add notes to Word document­s

Open an existing Word document, or create a new one. We’ve created a proposal for a club website. The first thing to do is to enable Word’s revision features. In Word 2003 click on the View menu and choose Toolbars and then Reviewing. This adds a new toolbar that contains all the tools we’ll be using for the rest of the Workshop to add revisions and make comments. Then click the Track Changes button to turn on the reviewing features.

Because it uses the ribbon bar rather than a series of button bars, Word 2007 works slightly differently. And, as we’ll see later, it has one or two more features than Word 2003. To get started, simply look along the tabs at the top and click on Review. Along with Word 2007’s spelling and grammar options, this ribbon bar is where all the reviewing and revision features are found. Again, to switch on reviewing, click the big Track Changes button in the centre of the ribbon bar.

In Word 2007, click the arrow under Balloons in the ribbon bar and make sure ‘Show only Comments and Formatting in Balloons’ is selected. In Word 2003 click the arrow next to the Show button and choose Balloons and then ‘Only for comments/formatting’. Now let’s change the salutation. ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ sounds old fashioned, so let’s get rid of the ‘or Madam’ and add an ‘s’ to make it ‘Dear Sirs’. As we do this Word crosses out the letters while at the same time turns them red so the changes are really easy to see.

We’ve made a couple of similar changes and now want to alter the way the text looks. Here we’ve moved the text cursor to the start of the line ‘Here is the site layout’ and pressed Enter to open up a single line space between it and the previous paragraph. Then we’ve highlighted the text and applied bold formatting. Notice that Word adds a description for the change in the right-hand margin in a balloon.

Balloons afford control over where Word displays the notices of the various edits and revisions we make to our document. In Word 2007, hover the mouse pointer over the Balloons icon in the ribbon bar and a thumbnail illustrating how they work will appear. Next, click the arrow under the Balloons icon again and then try the different options there in turn to see what effect they have. This screenshot shows what happens when we choose ‘Show All Revisions Inline’. To see the same effect in Word 2003 click the Show button, then Balloons, then Never.

Revert to the previous setting so that balloons are showing for comments and formatting and then let’s insert a comment. Comments are useful when you want to query something in the document rather than suggesting an outright change. Here we’ve placed the cursor after the word ‘tender’ and then clicked the New Comment icon in the ribbon bar (in Word 2003, click the Insert Comment button instead). Word highlights ‘tender’ and creates a new empty comment in the margin where we can write the comment.

Insert another comment somewhere and, in Word 2007, have a look at the three icons next to the large New Comment icon. Click the arrow next to the top one to open the menu; from here it’s easy to delete the currently selected comment or all the comments in the document. Close that menu and look at the two icons underneath. By clicking these it’s possible to move from one comment to the next, which is particularly useful in a long document. Word 2003 allows deletion of comments but lacks the next/previous comment feature.

As well as altering the text in the body of the document, it’s possible to change both the header and footer. In Word 2007, click the Insert tab and then click the Header icon. Choose Blank from the dropdown menu and then type in the words DRAFT PROPOSAL and click the Close Header and Footer button in the ribbon bar. In Word 2003 click the View menu and choose Header and Footer then type in the text and click the Close button on the Header and Footer toolbar.

Although comments and revisions are useful when going through complex documents that need work, these features really count when the document is being passed round between two or more people. Revisions and comments are saved with the document so that it can be emailed to a friend or colleague and they can add their own thoughts and suggestions. Here, for example, we’ve sent our document to a friend who’s made a note on our first comment. The second person’s comment appears in a different colour with their initials next to it (RB).

Similarly, any other changes they make (deleting words, adding new text and so on) will also appear in this same colour. If the document was to be shared with a third person, their edits would be assigned their own colour so that it’s clear who’s made the changes. It’s easy to see who’s been involved in reviewing a document. In Word 2007, click the Show Markup icon and select Reviewers from the dropdown menu. In Word 2003 click the Show button and then choose Reviewers from the menu.

For longer documents consider using the Reviewing Pane, a dedicated panel that shows a summary of all the revisions made to a document along with detailed entries for each one. To have a look at it in Word 2007, click the arrow next to the Reviewing Pane icon in the ribbon bar and choose either the horizontal or vertical views depending on your preference. Word 2003 only has a vertical Reviewing Pane. To activate it, click the Reviewing Pane button on the Reviewing toolbar.

Close the Reviewing Pane by clicking the X in the top right corner (in Word 2003 click the Reviewing Pane button again to toggle it off). Then work through the various edits. Here, for example, we’ve reached the stage where all the comments have been considered and either accepted or rejected so we can start to remove them. To delete a comment in Word 2007, click on it and then click the Delete Comment icon on the ribbon bar. In Word 2003 click the Reject Change/Delete Comment button on the button bar.

If there’s a change in the text that everyone accepts, it can be confirmed by right-clicking on it and then choosing Accept Change from the pop-up menu; alternatively, if the change isn’t worth doing, you can click on Reject Change (Word 2003 calls this Accept/Reject Deletion). Sometimes changes can involve two separate actions (here we’ve deleted some words and then added an ‘s’) so remember that both changes must be accepted or rejected. (Again Word 2003 labels this as Accept or Reject Insertion.)

There’s loads more that can be done using these features. In Word 2007, click the arrow under the Track Changes icon in the ribbon bar and choose Change Tracking Options from the dropdown menu. This dialogue box has many settings for changing the way that common edits such as insertions and deletions are displayed, as well as what happens when text gets moved around inside a document, how comments are displayed and whether things like formatting are tracked at all. To see Word 2003’s equivalent, click the Show button and choose Options.