Tuesday, 21 July 2009

How to copy text from a Word Document and keep Track Changes

If you are reviewing a Word document and want to copy a paragraph, page or a couple of pages into a new document, any reviews/track changes will be lost when you paste the text into the new file.

To keep your review/track changes in the new document do the following.

  1. Save a copy of the Word document. [This is your backup]


  2. Select the text you want to copy.


  3. Press CTRL + F3. This will cut the text along with track changes. [Hence the need to follow step 1 and make a backup of the original Word document].


  4. Open a new Word document.


  5. Press CTRL + SHIFT + F3. This will paste your selected text AND your reviews/track changes along with it.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome tip. I have been trying to figure ut how to do this for ages!!
Works for Word 2007 too.
Thanks

Anonymous said...

Thank you so so so much!!! Saved my life, and my job!

Tom said...

Thank you. Where do you find these tips?-but maybe you just worked it out for yourself, thanks anyway.

Anonymous said...

Takk for en interessant blogg

Maria said...

Indeed a saver tip!!!
Thanks much.

Anonymous said...

result! thank u

Ishna said...

Wonderful! Works for Word 2010 too! Just don't forget to turn off 'track changes' before you do the 'cut and paste' or it will show the cut and paste itself as a giant track change!

Thank you very much!

tufna said...

Thanks!

Zen Kanth said...

I was looking out for this Wonderful Tip for a long time! Thanks a lot...

aeli said...

This was very helpful -- thanks so much!

Just a minor point. While backing up might be safe, I think you can forego this step by using the undo function to reverse the cut (shortcut CTRL+Z) in the original document after the material has been successfully pasted.

Thx!

aeli said...

This was very helpful -- thanks so much!

Just a minor point. While backing up might be safe, I think you can forego this step by using the undo function to reverse the cut (shortcut CTRL+Z) in the original document after the material has been successfully pasted.

Thx!

Anonymous said...

fantastic! thank you so much

Anonymous said...

Thanks very much for this hint !!!
Saved my day.

Anonymous said...

You, sir, are my hero. Thanks very much!

Adrian said...

Fantastic! This has been driving me nuts. What an obscure solution though. Many thanks!

Anonymous said...

thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you! works for mac too, just using command + fn + f3, then command + fn + shift +f3 to paste. bravo. ta. :)

Anonymous said...

that has just saved me hours and hours! xxx

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU FOR SUCH AN AWESOME TIP

Stathis said...

Another way is to: turn OFF track changes, cut the text you want and paste it in a document, also with track changes set to OFF. Then you can turn track changes back ON.

I understand the reason they did this, which is that if you cut text with track changes ON, the act of removing this text is a change itself so this overrides the previous changes. However, if you are OFF mode, then the old tracking remains.

Erik Neu said...

I consider myself to be a MS-Word ninja, and I didn't know this one. Fortunately, I finally got desperate enough to have the motivation to actually search and see if it is possible. This was the first hit. Thanks!!!

Anonymous said...

Wow, thanks! Saved me tone of time and work too. Before this, I was selected all the rest of the text, and cutting. It took lots of time.

Jen said...

I'm so happy I found this! First hit on google and worked a treat - thank goodness! You've saved my PhD thesis a lot of hassle.

Anonymous said...

You are amazing!!! Like beyond amazing!!! This saved me a ton of time, and enabled me to get the job done. So thanks!!!!!!