Sunday, March 9, 2014

Copy and Print Comments and Tracked Changes from Word Document

I wanted to print out a copy of the comments that my professor had embedded into my Word Document, but it took me 2 hours to figure this answer out with some clues here and there.
You probably know about the embedded comments that can be inserted invisibly into a Word document. I still don't know why anybody would want to do this except to screw with the author, but MS has their own reasons for doing things. Here is what my professor's comments looked like in my submitted paper. I wanted to study his comments, but I couldn't figure out a way to copy them.

If you mouseover such a comment, you will see in a balloon the hidden comment, but you can't copy it or get it to stay up. You can select "edit comment" from the top bar, but you can't select and copy it.
You might have noticed on your own that you can't copy comments from the balloons or from the "edit comments" window. How frustrating is that?

I found a clue on the MS website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/mac-word-help, but it was not the solution to my problem.
This still didn't get me to look at the comments, just to print the dang Word file with the freakin highlights.

HOWEVER, it was the beginning of enlightenment.
I quickly figured out the answer after trying that last MS Word misdirection.
Here is how you do it:

How to make a copy of the comments and tracked changes in your Word Document

You have to print out a copy OR make a PDF to save it in a page.

1. Click Print or key command control/command P
2. On the Copies & Pages drop-down menu, select "Microsoft Word".
3. On the Print What: Document drop-down menu, select "List of markup".
4. On the PDF drop-down menu, select "save as PDF…".

Then you will be able to read all the comments and hidden "tracked changes" in your document.

Following is the first page of what I saved into a PDF so you can see what it looks like. The entire list of Markups took up 3 pages in PDF form.

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