Mac Microsoft Word Remove Time From Track Changes

Removing the Time Stamp from Tracked Changes

Marguerite reviews student essays and uses the Track Changes feature of Word to add comments. She knows how to remove her name from the comment, but she would also like to remove the time and date stamp that Track Changes automatically includes (and displays) with each comment. She would prefer that her students not know the date and time when she reviewed their work.

There are a couple of things that you can try to see if they meet your needs. The first involves the Document Inspector. Follow these steps if you are using Word 2007:

You can also follow these steps to get rid of identifying information in comments and changes by following these steps in Word 2007:

1. Click the Office button.
2. At the left side of the screen choose Prepare | Inspect Document. Word displays the Document Inspector dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Document Inspector.

3. Select any (or all) available check boxes. At a minimum you should select the Document Properties and Personal Information option. (It is this one that removes date/time stamps and reviewers names.)
4. Click Inspect. Word examines your document for identifying information and displays, in a dialog box, what it finds.
5. Use the controls in the dialog box to actually get rid of any identifying information.
6. Click the Close button when done.

If you are using Word 2010 or a later version you should follow these steps, instead:

1. Click the File tab of the ribbon.
2. Make sure Info is selected at the left side of the screen. (It should be selected by default.)
3. Click the Check for Issues button (right next to the wording "Prepare for Sharing.") Word displays a few options you can choose.
4. Click Inspect Document. Word displays the Document Inspector dialog box.
5. Select any (or all) available check boxes. At a minimum you should select the Document Properties and Personal Information option. (It is this one that removes date/time stamps and reviewers names.)
6. Click Inspect. Word examines your document for identifying information and displays, in a dialog box, what it finds.
7. Use the controls in the dialog box to actually get rid of any identifying information.
8. Click the Close button when done.

When the Document Inspector is completed, the next time you save the document, Word replaces the markup author's actual names with the word "Author" and gets rid of the date/time stamps.

You should only use the Document Inspector approach if you don't mind other identifying information getting removed, as well. (For instance, things like author information that is stored in the document's Properties area is removed.)

If you prefer a bit more selective approach, you might try to use a macro. Using a macro it is not possible to change the date/time stamps Track Changes revisions, but it is possible to do so on comments. In practice, each time you cange a comment's text its date/time stamp is updated. With this behavior in mind, you can modify the content (and thereby modify the date/time) in order to mask the original date/time—for example, to a date/time that is just before when you provide the document to the student.

The following macro will re-write the text of comments thus changing their date/time stamps to the time that the macro was run. For good measure the macro also removes the author's initials.

Sub ChangeDatesOnComments()     Dim aComment As Comment      ActiveWindow.View.ShowComments = True     ActiveWindow.View.MarkupMode = wdBalloonRevisions     For Each aComment In ActiveDocument.Comments         aComment.Range.Text = aComment.Range.Text         aComment.Initial = ""     Next aComment End Sub        

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10121) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016.

Author Bio

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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Mac Microsoft Word Remove Time From Track Changes

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