Beyond the Basics: How to Collaborate With Others in Microsoft Word

Collaboration is a key element of good document creation in most workplaces. Like most things in Microsoft Word, collaboration tools are powerful but can be frustrating until you learn how they work and how to get the most out of them.

We’ve already seen tips for the best formatting in Word , and now it’s time to turn our attention to collaboration. You might be fortunate enough to be the only person working on the document, but chances are you have other people contributing as well. In some cases, it can be a lot of people. Fortunately, Word has some pretty solid collaboration tools.

The instructions in this post are based on Word 2013. Most of the functionality will work the same in previous versions and in the upcoming Word 2016, which is now in public preview . We will highlight the main differences.

Why use Word instead of Google Docs?

What is appealing to Google Docs, at least to me, is that I can easily create and edit any document on any internet-connected device I use. It’s free, fast, easy and everywhere. This is a powerful attraction. And if Google Docs does what you want it to do, why not use it?

The problem is that Google Docs doesn’t really have a robust feature set, and especially in the workplace, a lot of people need that power. When it comes to collaboration, Google Docs offers one important feature that Word still lacks. Collaboration in real time allows you to work with others on the same document at the same time, watching the changes they make.

In some cases, it is convenient to work in real time. If you have a small, tight-knit team that can come together to review a document, and ideally can communicate via voice or video chat (or in person) while editing, then this is hard to beat in real time. cooperation. In fact, this is the kind of environment in which Google Docs excels in general. Google Docs offers its own take on Word’s tracked change feature (although Google calls it suggestions), and it’s easy to use. But it’s nowhere near as robust as Word’s suggestion when you work with complex documents or complex commands. And this is the environment in which Microsoft Word excels.

At the end of the day, it is about choosing the tool that works best for your team.

Learn the basics of collaboration

I’ve been working on documents in Word for a very long time and have seen all forms of collaboration. People who insist on emailing me changes because they don’t want to interfere with the document. People who print documents and mark changes with their trusty pen. It sounds crazy, but this behavior is often caused by misunderstandings and consequent mistrust about how the collaboration tools in Word actually work.

There are really only two collaboration tools in Word:

• Change tracking allows you to visually track the changes of each person in the document. The added text is displayed in a different color for each person who made the change. Deleted text also changes color and appears as a strikethrough line. When it’s time to review the document, you can accept or reject each individual change.
• Comments supplement the document with notes that do not actually refer to the text of the document itself. These notes appear in the right margin, are color-coded along the same lines as the tracked changes, and include the initials of the commenter.

You can also find other collaboration tools depending on the version of Word you’re working with. In some older versions, you will see the Web Discussion tool, which is a kind of online commenting system.

Make someone responsible for the document

Before we dive into the details of how Word’s collaboration tools work, we need to talk about the most powerful way you can do to ensure good collaboration in Word. Make one person responsible for the document. Make this person responsible for making sure people understand (and use) the collaboration tools, guiding the document where it should go and making changes at every step of the process.

Depending on how you work with documents in your environment, this may seem like overkill. Maybe you only have two or three people working on a document, and you trust each of them to do their job. But what happens if three people decide to edit the same document at the same time?

Also keep in mind that things are much more complicated in many environments. Consider this small scenario. My wife works for a company that advises other companies preparing government proposals. One document can contain more than 100 pages. Each section of the document may be contacted by a different author, as well as other technicians or engineers. There is a whole chain of people at the main company to contribute, and several people at my wife’s company will also contribute, from technical editing to copy editing and formatting. And one sentence can contain eight or more such documents and go through a dozen stages of writing. As you can imagine, things quickly get messy.

One way to deal with this is to use a document management system like Microsoft SharePoint, where people have to check a document in order to work on it, and no one else can work on it at the same time. But even with this setup, you will find people trying to find shortcuts on the system.

Assigning one person to be in charge of managing the document and routing it through the various people who have to contribute (whether by email or through a content management system) goes a long way in preventing the nightmare of collaboration. So after this little lecture, let’s see how to manage some of these things in Word.

Track and Review Changes

To turn tracking changes on or off in a Word document, switch to the Browse toolbar and click the Track Changes button (or press Ctrl + Shift + E). When it is turned on, Word automatically marks any changes made to the document. Formatting changes are indicated by pop-up text in the right column.

When multiple people are working on a document with change tracking enabled, the changes of different people are flagged in different colors, so it’s easier to tell who did what. To see who made the change, just hold the pointer over the change for a moment to display a pop-up indicating the author, date, and type of change. All document changes (including formatting changes) are also marked with a vertical bar outside the left margin to make it easier to find changes.

At some point, you will need to review the changes and decide whether to accept or reject them. There are several ways to do this in Word:

• Toolbar . Checkout options are found in the Tracking and Changes sections of the Checkout toolbar. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate between changes to your document. Use Accept to make the change permanent and automatically proceed to the next change. Use Reject to revert to original text or formatting.
• Context menu . You can also right-click any change to open a context menu with options for accepting and rejecting the changes. Actually I like this way the most because I still hang with the pointer in case I need to make any last minute fixes. Since I usually read the document as I go through changes, using the context menu seems to interrupt my reading process the least.

You can also accept or reject multiple changes at once by highlighting the text and using the buttons on the toolbar. For example, you might prefer to read an entire paragraph at a time, select that paragraph, then accept all changes that have multiple changes, and then decide to accept (or reject) all changes to the paragraph. Unfortunately, you cannot use context menus this way, because for some reason the view options are not displayed unless any of the selected text is a marked change.

Change the way you view tracked changes

As with most things in Word, you can configure a fair amount of options to control how tracked changes appear. In the Tracking section of the Overview toolbar, there are four options in the Display to Verify drop-down menu:

• Simple markup . Use this view to see the final version of the document, with no tracked changes displayed on the line, but with red vertical lines in the left margin to indicate where tracked changes are taking place. You can click any of these margin lines to toggle between displaying inline markup and not (basically switching between simple markup views and all markup views), making it very easy to read a blank document but has quick access to tracked changes.
• All markup . Use this view to see all tracked changes in your document. This was the standard view in previous versions of Word (and was called Final: Show Markup), so if you are using an older version, you may find this is the most convenient to work with.
• No markup . Use this view to see the document as it would appear if all tracked changes were committed. This view is especially useful if you have a document that is so heavily marked up that it is difficult to read.
• Original . Use this view to preview the original state of the document before making any changes. Please note that any changes you make will be considered part of the original document.

Right below that menu, the Show Layout drop-down menu allows you to control what layout you see on the screen. You can turn markup on or off for comments, ink, insertions and deletions, formatting, popup types, or even specific reviewers.

Set advanced tracking options

You can even take it a step further by taking advantage of some advanced options. By default, Word automatically assigns one color to each author who edits a document, strikethrough deleted text, and underlined added text. But you can change all that.

In the lower-right corner of the Tracking section of the Browse toolbar, click the small pop-up arrow to open the Change Tracking Options window, and then click Advanced Options. The Advanced Track Changes Options window lets you tweak things a bit. You can control how different types of markup are displayed (for example, inserts, deletions, and changed lines) and how they are colored. For example, maybe instead of seeing a different color coding for each reviewer, you want to see all changes in red. You can do it. Or maybe you want inserts to be bold rather than underlined, and so inserts are colored red and deletions are blue. You can do that too. You can also control things like how table changes are handled, formatting tracking, and even the size of tooltips (for comments and formatting changes) and the fields in which they appear.

Protect your document

One of the best ways to make sure everyone is using change tracking is to lock the document. Word 2013 (and 2016) makes this very easy. Click the drop-down menu under the Track Changes button and click Lock Track. Word will ask you to assign a password. You can only unblock tracking if you enter a password.

When tracking is disabled, no one can turn off change tracking, and no one can accept or reject any changes. Any changes made to the document are tracked using whatever options you set.

You can also enable this feature by clicking the Restrict Editing button on the Browse toolbar. In fact, this method gives you additional options, such as limiting formatting to specific styles and allowing only certain types of changes, such as comments. The Restrict Editing button is also available in previous versions of Word.

Leave comments for others

The comments are actually pretty straightforward. Click anywhere in the document (or select text) and then click New Comment in the Review toolbar. An empty comment bubble will appear in the right box, and you can enter whatever you want. You can use the toolbar to navigate through comments in your document and delete them when you no longer need them.

Word 2013 (and 2016) also offers comment threads. In any comment, just click the “Reply” button to reply to that comment and keep everything in order and order. Before 2013, there were no comment threads, so things could get a little confusing. If you’re using the older version, one easy way to make your comment thread closer is to simply add text to the existing comment by spacing down and including your name at the beginning of the new text. This is not very good, but it prevents the page from overflowing with multiple comments on the same topic.

As simple as they are to use, one of the problems I encountered with the comments is getting people to use them. I still have people who will email me comments along with page and paragraph numbers that might change as the document is edited. And I have people who insist on leaving their comments as pasted text right into the document. So this is another example where a little preparation and training can go a long way.

Merge or compare changes

If you really find yourself in a situation where you have multiple versions of the same document, Word does offer a way to combine or compare documents. To be honest, I hate using it. It is much better to let each reviewer make changes in turn. But sometimes something happens. The merge and compare functions work by making changes from one document to the original version of that document. Just note that you can use any document as the original, no matter what Word calls it. Consider it the main document. Both tools are located under the Compare button in the Browse toolbar.

• Combine . This tool consolidates changes to documents from multiple reviewers and is the best choice if you have multiple documents, all of which contain tracked changes. You will be working with two documents at the same time. When you merge two documents, your window is split into three sections. The large pane on the left shows the merged document showing tracked changes from both documents. The two smaller panels on the right show the original and modified document. You can process and accept the changes using the usual methods. While it’s tempting to just merge all of your documents into one (assuming you have three or more), you’re much better off working on two documents at once, reviewing all the changes, and then making changes from the next document. …
• Compare . This tool is useful if you have a version of a document in which tracked changes were not included when the changes were made. This tool also offers a three-pane view with the document being compared to the left. When scrolling, all three windows scroll together to the same point in the document.

See what we missed, or want to share some tips? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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