By tracking changes, a document can be reviewed by several group members while the writer maintains final control over which changes to accept or reject. It is easy to prepare copies of a document to distribute to a group for electronic review and markup. When change tracking is turned on, Word 2000 uses revision marks, the equivalent of “redlining” to indicate tracked changes. After the document is reviewed, the author can see the changes made by the different reviewers each in a different color.

After viewing tracked changes, the author can accept or reject each change. You can also choose to show or hide tracked changes on the screen or in the printed document by using the Highlight Changes dialog box. From the Tools menu, point to Track Changes and then click Highlight Changes. You can require students to turn in electronic copies of their peer-reviewed documents to check for participation and the value of student comments.

You can also consolidate all changes and comments from different reviewers in one easy step. If you assign students to peer editing groups, multiple reviewers can edit separate copies of the same document and then the writer can merge all their changes into the original. Or, if you or your students use separate computers at home and on campus you can keep working on your document at home and automatically merge your changes back into the original document at school.

To Merge Comments and Changes From Several Reviewers Into One Document

1. Open the original document into which you want to merge changes.

2. On the Tools menu, click Merge Documents.

3. Open one of the documents that has changes to be merged.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until all copies of the document are merged.

5. Word 2000 displays all the reviewers' tracked changes and comments, each reviewer represented by a different color. You can then review comments and accept or reject changes as usual.

THE REVIEWING TOOLBAR

On the Reviewing toolbar you can quickly access all the common reviewing tools you need to track and review changes, insert and review comments, highlight text, save new versions of documents, and send the document in an e-mail message.

INSERTING REVIEW COMMENTS

You and your reviewers can make annotations on the screen without changing the document text by using Insert Comment  on the Reviewing toolbar. When a comment is added, Word 2000 numbers it and records it in a separate comment pane. Word 2000 then inserts a comment reference mark in the document and highlights the text that's commented on in yellow. As with revision marks, Word 2000 shows each reviewer's comment marks in a distinct color.

You can view comments in ScreenTips or in the comment pane. Word 2000 displays each comment and the name of the reviewer making the comment in a ScreenTip above the text. (If a ScreenTip doesn't appear, click Options on the Tools menu, click the View tab, and then select the ScreenTips check box under Show.) Use the comment pane to edit and review all the comments in the document.

COMPARING DOCUMENT DRAFTS

Use Word 2000’s Compare Document feature to view changes to documents that have not been revised by using the Track Changes feature. For example, if each draft of a student research paper has been saved as a document, you can open the newer version and then use the Compare Documents command (Tools menu, Track Changes submenu) to compare it with an older version. When you compare documents, Word 2000 uses Track Changes to show you how the old document is different from the new one.