How do you edit a document that is not yours in Word, with it remaining unchanged?

truelyana

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Quick question. I've always wanted to know how to edit a document in word, especially if someone else wrote it. To view those little boxes at the side, and add on something which you think needs to go there. I see these documents all the time at work, but I just haven't figured out where the option is for it yet. Any clues?
 
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Ah, the comments, you mean? thethinker42 and I use that function all the time when we read each other's stuff.

Highlight the text you want to comment on, go to the 'insert' menu and click on comment. As far as I recall, that's how you do it in earlier versions of Office than 2007.

If you have 2007, it's done through the 'review' menu, where you can insert a new comment on the highlighted text.
 

truelyana

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Ah, the comments, you mean? thethinker42 and I use that function all the time when we read each other's stuff.

Highlight the text you want to comment on, go to the 'insert' menu and click on comment. As far as I recall, that's how you do it in earlier versions of Office than 2007.

If you have 2007, it's done through the 'review' menu, where you can insert a new comment on the highlighted text.

Yes, that's the one. Thank you. :Hail:

Do you know if there is any other options added to the side, apart from comments? Like edit or something?
 
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You mean you want to edit the document? You'd just have to make the changes then save the document under another name so it didn't overwrite the earlier version.

Course, I'm still getting used to Office '07 so someone else might be better placed to answer that.

I'm going to have a fiddle around with the edit functions now, see if I can't figure this out.

Apparently you can split the screen and have two different versions of the same document showing, or two different pages of the same document.

I heart Office '07.
 

Ken

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...on the File drop down menu there's also "versions" which allows you to automatically save a new copy of a document each time you close it. Never used it myself, so I'm not sure how effective this option is.
 

truelyana

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Thank you both, on the neat tricks.

I feel you answered it on the first response Scarlet.

Having a document, than editing(commenting on the right hand side), than sending to someone else, and than they edit it, and so on.
 

FennelGiraffe

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Are you perhaps thinking of Track Changes? When several different people edit a document, it shows each person's changes in a different color. In Word 2003, it's under Tools.
 

Sarita

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If you use track changes, you can make comments on your changes, too.

Like FG said, it's under Tools. If you go to Tools: Options: and click on the track changes tab, you can tell it to use balloons for comments, change the colours of the comments, and a bunch of other stuff. When you're ready to get rid of all the notes and comments, save it as something else and accept all changes.