Editing a Student's Work in Word 2003 (Peer Editing or Revision Editing)

Before you do any peer editing/student feedback, you need to make sure that Microsoft Word knows who you are. The name and initials you give will determine how the comments and changes you make appear. You will need to do this every time you begin an editing session. To update your initials:

  1. Open Microsoft Word
  2. Click Tools
  3. Click Options
  4. Click the User Information tab
  5. Type your name and your initials
  6. Click OK

IMPORTANT TIP: If you change this half way through a document, it will retain the initial changes and then change colors and initials for the rest of the comments and changes from then on. This is perfect when you have peer editing groups.


There are three helpful ways to share/edit work and facilitate peer editing/student feedback:

A. Commenting on a student's work
B. Tracking Changes (with the Compare Documents feature)
C. Saving Versions of Documents

(IMPORTANT NOTE: These features will only work on Word documents created in Microsoft Word '97 and higher. They will not work with documents before that. The features will also not work with files saved in rich-text format (.rtf).)


Before you begin, it will be helpful for you to turn on the Reviewing toolbar in Word. To do this:

  1. Click View
  2. Click Toolbars
  3. Click Reviewing

The Reviewing toolbar (image below) will now appear at the top of your screen. You can use these buttons for the steps outlined below.



A. Commenting on a Student's Work:

In order to use the Comments feature of Word, you need to first highlight the word, words, paragraph, or section of the document that you would like to comment on. You can then insert a comment there in one of the following 2 ways:

      1. Click Insert
      2. Click Comment
      3. A Comment balloon will appear to the right of the area you are commenting on
      4. Type the text you would like to come up when he/she views this comment inside the balloon to the right (cursor will be flashing)
      5. Click anywhere outside of the balloon on the right to finalize the comment

Or you can click the icon on the Reviewing toolbar to insert a comment. You can then type the text you would like to come up when they view this comment and click anywhere outside of the balloon on the right to finalize the comment.

To edit comments:

  1. Click inside of the comment ballooon on the right
  2. Continue typing or delete/add other comments

To delete comments:

  1. Right-click on a comment and click Delete Comment or
  2. Click the Reject Change/Delete Comment button () in the Reviewing Toolbar

To hide comments (to view the document without comments):

  1. Click in the Reviewing toolbar (shown above)
  2. Click Comments
  3. Or click the down arrow to the right of ( in the Reviewing toolbar and choose Final
  4. To view the comments again, follow steps 1 and 2

To print the document with comments:

  1. Make sure you are viewing the comments on the page
  2. Click Print

B. Tracking Changes:

In order to use the Tracking Changes feature, you need to first turn the feature on. It is important that you turn it on AND turn it back off when you are done. There are two ways to turn the Tracking Changes feature on and off. You can follow the instructions below:

      1. Click Tools
      2. Click Track Changes

Or you can double-click the TRK button () at the bottom of your screen. Double-clicking when it is greyed out will turn on Tracking Changes and double-clicking while it is high-lighted () will turn it back off.

Once you have turned it on, begin making changes to the document.  Notice that if you add anything, it comes up underlined.  If you delete or backspace, a clear balloon will appear on the right with the information that was deleted.   This allows students to see what changes you have made without losing their original text. 

To change the colors or options in the 'Tracking changes' mode:

  1. Click Tools
  2. Click Options
  3. Click the Tracking Changes tab
  4. Change any options you would like, and then click OK

To accept or reject the changes you or reviewers have made:

After you have gone through and made the changes you want, you can accept or reject any or all changes in the document.  This will, according to the decisions you make, alter the original according to the changes specified.  There are three ways to accept or reject changes you have made:

- The first option is to simply right-click on a highlighted change in your document and click Accept Deletion/Reject Deletion or Accept Insertion/Reject Insertion.

- Your second option is to use the (Previous) and/or (Next) buttons on the Reviewing toolbar to advanced reverse through the changes. Once the next or previous change is highlighted, use the (Accept Change) or (Reject Change) icons on the Reviewing toolbar.

- The third option allows you to begin with the first change and move successively through all the changes, choosing to Accept or Reject each change. To use this feature:

  1. Click the down arrow at the right of the Reviewing toolbar
  2. Click Add or Remove Buttons
  3. Click Reviewing
  4. Click Accept or Reject Changes to add the button
  5. Click the Accept or Reject Changes button to begin

To see the three versions of the document that you have set up:

  1. The changes with highlighting, which holds your changes and the original text
  2. The changes without highlighting, which is the document you have created by your changes
  3. The original text

    OR:

  4. Click the down arrow to the right of in the Reviewing toolbar and choose one of the following options:
    • Final - to see the document with all of the changes implemented
    • Original Showing Markup - to see the original document with highlighted changes (may be the same as Final Showing Markup)
    • Original - to see the document before changes were made

To accept or reject changes:

  1. Click Find in whichever view you choose
  2. Click Accept or Reject for each change you made in the document (if you know at this point you will be accepting or rejecting everything, click the appropriate button)
  3. When you are finished with the changes, click Close

To choose not to use the balloons added to the right for Comments and/or Tracking Changes:

  1. Click the button in the Reviewing toolbar
  2. Click Balloons
  3. Click Never

IMPORTANT: DON'T FORGET TO TURN THE 'TRACKING CHANGES' FUNCTION OFF!

To do this, double-click on the TRK button () at the bottom or:

    1. Click Tools
    2. Click Tracking Changes

Compare Documents:

Along with the tracking changes tool, Word also has a Compare Documents feature that allows you to look at two documents within one screen. For example, if you have created one document and saved it, then made changes to the original document and saved it as something else, Word allows you to pull the documents together and uses the track changes highlighting to show you the differences between the documents. To do this:

  1. Open the newer document
  2. Click Tools
  3. Click Compare and Merge Documents
  4. When it asks you to open another document, open the other document you would like to compare the current document with (the original or previous document)
  5. Choose whether you want the formatting from the new document or the original document by clicking the appropriate radio button and clicking Continue with Merge
  6. You will now see the two documents merged into one with the changes highlighted. You can close this without saving or you can accept/reject changes and save this as a completely new document. To see the document in the format below, you may need to choose to turn off the default balloons. To do this:
    • Click the button in the Reviewing toolbar
    • Click Balloons
    • Click Never

The following is a visual representation of this feature:

ORIGINAL:

NEW DOCUMENT:

COMPARED DOCUMENTS:


C. Saving Versions of Documents

Versions allows you to save different versions of your document all within the one document file. For example, inside the file paper.doc, you could have an original version, a revised version, and a final version. IMPORTANT: This is a new feature for Word '97, 2000, XP, and 2003, and does not work with any previous versions of Word. It also will not work with documents that were created in a previous version of Word.

To save a version of a document, either:

  1. Click File
  2. Make sure the full drop down menu is viewable (click the double arrows at the bottom if not)
  3. Click Versions
  4. Click Save Now
  5. Type comments about the version you are saving, such as "Version without comments"
  6. Click OK

Every time you open up a document, it will open to the most recently used version. To open a different version:

  1. Click File
  2. Make sure the full drop down menu is visible (click the double arrows at the bottom if not)
  3. Click Versions
  4. Click on the version you would like to open
  5. Click Open

IMPORTANT: Don't forget that saving a version of your document does not replace the need to save the document itself. You will need to save the file as you normally would.

If you are using Versions as part of a round-robin peer editing group, you will want to be careful to follow this diagram:

Peer Editing Map

If you have any questions, call (815) 939-5302
Last updated 05/14/04