Documents tower · floor

How to track changes in Word, and how to get rid of them

Look at how this is searched and the real problem shows itself. How to track changes in word is asked about as often as how to turn it off, and about as often as how to remove the changes — three phrasings, three different operations, and most people discover they are different at the worst moment.

Turning it off does not remove anything

What people expect Switch Track Changes off, and the coloured text and crossings-out disappear. The document goes back to normal.
What Word does Microsoft: “Word stops marking changes, but the coloured underlines and strikethroughs are still in the document.”

That single sentence explains why “turn off track changes” and “remove track changes” are searched almost as often as how to switch it on. Turning it off stops new marks appearing. Everything already marked stays exactly where it is. And Microsoft is explicit about the other near-miss too: “Hiding changes doesn’t remove them from the document. You must use the Accept and Reject commands in the Changes group to remove markup from your document.”

The three different things people mean

All in the same place — Review, in the ribbon — and each doing something the others do not.

Start tracking Microsoft: “Go to Review > Track Changes.” You can track “For Everyone” or “Just Mine”.
Stop tracking The same switch again. New edits stop being marked. Existing marks are untouched — this is the step people mistake for cleaning the document.
Actually remove the marks Accept or Reject, one at a time or all at once. This is the only thing that takes the markup out. Hiding it does not, and neither does switching tracking off.
When you cannot switch it off Microsoft: “If a document has been shared with you for review, you may not be able to turn off Track Changes.” That is deliberate, not a fault.

The order that avoids the whole problem is short. Track while you edit. Accept or reject before you send. Everything else in this cluster is somebody discovering, usually late, that those are two separate actions.

Why this is a privacy question and not only a tidiness one

Tracked changes are a record of what a document used to say. A contract where a clause was softened, a report where a number was revised, an application where a sentence about a previous employer was removed — all of that travels inside the file, and it is visible to anyone who opens it and turns the markup back on.

Hiding the marks makes them invisible on your screen. It does not take them out. A reviewer, a counterpart or an opposing solicitor sees the same file you do, and one click shows them the version history you thought you had removed.

So the habit worth forming is a final step rather than a setting: before a document leaves you, accept or reject everything, then look at it once more with markup showing. If it is clean with the markup on, it is clean.

None of which is an argument against the feature. Track changes is the best thing in Word for work that passes between people: it shows exactly what one person did to another person’s text, it can be undone selectively, and it makes a conversation about a document possible without anybody losing their version. The feature is not the trap. The gap between hiding and removing is.

The phrasings map onto the three operations exactly. How to turn on track changes in word is somebody starting. How to turn off track changes in word and how to disable track changes in word are somebody who wants the marking to stop — and who will be surprised in a moment. How to remove track changes in word is the same person, five minutes later, having realised the marks are still there. And how to redline in word is the same job under the name lawyers and editors use for it.

Where to start

Four ways in.

“I want to mark up somebody’s document.”
Start at tracking while you edit
“I want the coloured text gone.”
It is above. Then cleaning a document
“I received a document I cannot clean.”
Read documents from others
“What else is hidden in the file?”
Go to what travels inside

Tracking while you edit

Using the feature as intended, which is the easy half and the one with the fewest surprises.

Turning it onReview › Track Changes, and the difference between “For Everyone” and “Just Mine”.Being built
Comments and changesTwo different things in the same margin, and when each is the right one.Being built
Comparing two versionsProducing a marked-up file from two documents that were never tracked.Being built

Cleaning a document

The half that goes wrong. Three operations that look alike and are not, and only one of them removes anything.

Accept or reject everythingThe only action that takes the markup out, and how to do it in one step.Being built
Hiding is not removingWhat the display setting does, and the false confidence it creates.Being built
Checking before you sendThe thirty-second look with markup showing that settles it.Being built

Documents from others

When the file is not yours, the rules change — sometimes deliberately, and Microsoft says so.

When tracking cannot be turned offMicrosoft: on a document shared for review, you may not be able to.Being built
Returning a marked-up fileWhat to leave in and what to resolve before sending it back.Being built
Working with several reviewersKeeping it legible when four people have been through the same paragraph.Being built

What travels inside

Tracked changes are one of several things a file carries that you did not mean to send. This wing covers the rest.

Hidden data in documentsAuthor names, edit history and hidden data you did not mean to send.Being built
What compressing strips outAdobe’s optimiser removes “comments, forms, multimedia, and private data” as a side effect.Open this floor → Exporting to PDFThe route already in the File menu, and what Microsoft says it does to your fonts.Open this floor → Redacting properlyPreview has a redaction tool, and a black rectangle is not the same thing.Open this floor →

What this tower will not do

It will not tell you that switching tracking off cleans a document. Microsoft says the opposite, and this floor quotes it.

It will not treat this as a formatting nuisance. What a document used to say is information, and it leaves the building inside the file.

And it will not recommend a tool for it. Everything here is three buttons on the Review tab, in software the document is already open in. What holds instead is simple: the behaviour described here is quoted from Microsoft’s own documentation.

Where this page got its facts

  1. Microsoft Support — Track changes in Word, including the statement that turning tracking off leaves existing marks in the document — support.microsoft.com, read 21 August 2026.

Written by Alberto Gulotta

Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.

Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.

Written on 21 August 2026.

Independence and limits

No affiliate links and no paid placements anywhere on this site. Nobody pays to appear here, and no company has seen this page before you did.

This is general information, not professional advice. Where a page touches money, health, safety or the law, it names its source and the date it was read — and your situation may still differ. See the privacy page and the cookie policy.