How to review a document with other people: tracked changes, comments and Restrict Editing

Three tools, three jobs

• Tracked changes keep a record of edits. Every insertion and deletion stays marked, with the name of the person who made it and the time, until somebody accepts or rejects it.
• Comments carry the conversation: questions, reasons and objections that are not themselves edits, attached to the words they are about.
• Restrict Editing sets what reviewers may do at all — only comment, only make tracked changes, only fill in a form, or nothing.

A review that goes well usually uses all three. The author protects the document for tracked changes, sends it round, collects the edits and comments, and then one person goes through them and decides.

Tracked changes

In Microsoft Word the switch is Review → Track Changes (Ctrl+Shift+E); in LibreOffice Writer it is Edit → Track Changes → Record Changes; Google Docs calls the same idea Suggesting mode. While it is on, new words are marked as an insertion, and deleted words stay on the page struck through rather than disappearing. Word records changes of formatting too.

Each change carries a name and a time. The name is whatever the reviewer’s program is set to — in Word, the user name under File → Options → General, or the account they are signed in with — and the time comes from their computer’s clock.

Word shows a review four ways, chosen on the Review tab:

• Simple Markup: the text as it would read with every change accepted, and a red line in the margin beside each changed line.
• All Markup: every insertion underlined and every deletion struck through, in a colour for each reviewer.
• No Markup: the text as it would read with every change accepted, and nothing to show there were changes.
• Original: the text as it was before anybody changed it.

The views change what you see, not what is in the file. A document shown with No Markup still carries every change; only accepting it (the change becomes ordinary text) or rejecting it (the change is undone) takes one away. Previous and Next walk the changes in order, and Accept All and Reject All deal with the rest at once.

If somebody edited a copy without tracking, Review → Compare in Word builds the tracked changes from the differences between the two versions, which beats reading them side by side.

Comments

Review → New Comment (Ctrl+Alt+M in Word) attaches a note to the selected words. In current versions of Word a comment is a thread: others reply under it, and Resolve marks the thread done without deleting it, so the discussion can be reopened. Delete removes a comment for good, and Delete All Comments in Document clears them before a final version goes out.

A good rule: if you know what the words should say, make the edit with tracking on, so the author can accept it in one click. Use a comment for what an edit cannot say — a question, a reason, a doubt.

Restrict Editing

Review → Restrict Editing opens a pane with three steps:

• Formatting restrictions: limit formatting to a selection of styles, so reviewers cannot set fonts and sizes by hand.
• Editing restrictions: allow only one kind of editing — No changes (Read only), Tracked changes, Comments, or Filling in forms. With No changes or Comments you can select passages and tick Everyone as an exception, so those parts stay open to anyone.
• Start enforcement: Yes, Start Enforcing Protection, with a password or without one.

For a review, Tracked changes is the setting that matters. Everyone can edit, tracking cannot be turned off, and nobody can accept or reject a change until the protection is stopped — which leaves those decisions to whoever holds the password. Comments suits a document that is finished but open to questions, and Filling in forms locks everything except the form’s fields. Word’s Track Changes menu also has Lock Tracking, which keeps tracking switched on behind a password.

What each one protects against, and what it does not

• Tracked changes protect against quiet edits, not determined ones. A reviewer can turn tracking off, change something and turn it back on; only Lock Tracking or protection for tracked changes stops that. And the names on changes and comments are whatever each person’s program says. Nothing checks them.
• Restrict Editing protects against accidents, and keeps honest people to the parts they are meant to change. It is not encryption. The document opens and reads normally in any program; what holds the rules is a setting, with a hash of the password, asking the program to enforce them. A program that ignores the setting, or anyone who removes it from the file, can edit freely. For contents that must stay private, encrypt the file — a different kind of password, explained in the article on what a password on a Word or Excel file actually protects.
• Mark as Final (File → Info → Protect Document) protects against nothing. It opens the document read-only with a banner, and the banner has an Edit Anyway button.

Before the document leaves

Tracked changes and comments travel with the file. A deletion is kept, word for word, until it is accepted, so a document sent out with its changes merely hidden still carries every earlier wording, every reviewer’s name and every comment. In a .docx they sit in word/document.xml and word/comments.xml for anyone who unzips it.

So before a final version goes to anyone outside the review, accept or reject every change, delete every comment, and check that Next finds nothing. Word’s Document Inspector (File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document) finds comments, revisions and personal information and removes them in one pass. If you send a PDF, make it from the clean version: a PDF made while markup is showing carries the markup with it.