How to provide feedback to a Document Author

Option 1) You can hand-write, FAX, email, or verbally describe your suggested changes.

Option 2) For Word documents that aren't protected, the best way to provide feedback is by using Track Changes.

Tip: Track Changes works only in unprotected Word documents.
Many Systems2win Word templates are password-protected, but Systems2win provides you with the password to unlock and edit them. To protect or unprotect a Word document, select Tools > Protection, or in Word 2007: Review tab > Protect Document.

Option 3) For password protected documents, you can achieve similar results by:

1. Highlighting your suggested changes in a different font color
2. Using strikethrough to suggest deletions (with text highlighted, select format > font > strikethrough, or Word 2007: Home tab > Strikethrough)
3. Adding your initials (or other mark) to each suggested change - so that the Author can use Control-F to quickly find each of your suggested changes.

How to use Track Changes

What is Track Changes? 

Track Changes is a feature within Microsoft Word that makes it easy to suggest changes to a document.

We suggest using Track Changes in MS Word only. Although it is available in other MS Office applications, (such as Excel), we have found it to be problem-prone in anything but Word.

To highlight suggested changes 

1) Turn on the Track Changes feature:

If using MS Word XP 2002...   Tools > Track Changes (which will toggle Track Changes on. If you do it again, it will toggle off.)

If using MS Word 97 or 2000...  Tools > Track Changes > Highlight Changes; and then click the box that says Track Changes While Editing. 

If using MS Word 2007... Review tab > Track Changes > Track Changes (which will toggle Track Changes on. If you do it again, it will toggle off.)

2) Make your suggested changes. 

Optional technique for documents that undergo a series of "dialog" changes: Start each of your changes with your initials. Whenever you start a new round of changes, follow your initials with a number, so that everyone can quickly search for your new changes. (E.g. use dz1 for the first round of changes, and dz2 for the second round.)

3) Save your revised document, and email it to the document's Author.

DO NOT EVER OVERWRITE THE MASTER DOCUMENT ON THE SERVER UNLESS YOU ARE THE AUTHOR.

Author instructions to accept/reject/edit suggested changes

Merge Documents

Merge Documents can be used on un-password-protected documents when:

1. Someone made changes without using Track Changes
2. The same document is simultaneously sent to multiple people for comments

Tools > Merge Documents. Or Word 2007: Review tab > Compare. Just follow the intuitive screen prompts - which will compare the revised document with the original - and highlight the changes just like Track Changes.

Merge Documents only works well in Word XP or higher.

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