Technology Tip of the Week - January 25, 2006

Revise or Insert Comments on a Word Document without Changing Original

Did you know that Microsoft Word has a Reviewing toolbar that will allow you to make revisions and comments to a document that leave the original intact? This set of reviewing tools is great when you want to do electronic editing of student work and send it back to them for their review or rewrite or when you want to work on a document with other members of your department or committee. When you share your documents with others, you can track changes to see exactly what additions and deletions everyone made. Then group members, or your students, can accept or reject the revisions one at a time or all at once. If reviewers return their changes in separate documents, you can merge all their revisions into a single document and then review them. If you want a record of changes made to a document, you can save different versions of a document within the same document.

Tracking changes in a document allows you to make revisions to a document without losing the original text. When you track changes, Word shows changed text in a different color from the original text and uses revision marks, such as underlines, to distinguish the revised text from the original text. To preserve the layout of your document, Word also identifies the change and its type, such as a deletion, in a balloon that appears in the margin of the document. By default, Word underlines and changes the color of inserted text. It also includes a vertical changed line in the margin to the left of any changed text to help you locate changes in the document.

This same set of tools also allows you to insert comments throughout a document. These comments can be hidden or visible depending on the view you choose and are marked with the initials of the person who made them. This is a great way to ask questions, suggest changes or just express a thought at a specific point in a document.

To access the Reviewing toolbar in Word:

Open Word

Click on View - Toolbars - Reviewing

You will now see a new group of icons at the top of your window with each of the editing tools. Move your cursor over each one to see the tool tip that identifies each tool

To start the reviewing process for additions and deletions in a document, click on the Track Changes button on the toolbar. When you're done, click on the Track Changes button again to toggle it off.

To insert a Comment into a Document

Open a document in Word

Click in the text that you wish to comment on

From the toolbar choose the Insert Comment button OR click on the menu bar and choose Insert - Comment

Type your Comment

That's it! There is even a highlighting option that allows you to click on the Highlight button to select it and then drag your cursor over the text you wish to emphasize. To stop highlighting, just click back on the Highlight button to toggle it off.

For more information on accessing and using the reviewing toolbar in Word, please see: http://it.ccri.edu/Faculty/electronic_editing.shtml

Article of the Week

The Processed Book by Joseph J. Esposito, President of Portable CEO, a Bay Area independent consultancy specializing in digital media.

"The "processed book" is about content, not technology, and contrasts with the "primal book"; the latter is the book we all know and revere: written by a single author and viewed as the embodiment of the thought of a single individual. The processed book, on the other hand, is what happens to the book when it is put into a computerized, networked environment. To process a book is more than simply building links to it; it also includes a modification of the act of creation, which tends to encourage the absorption of the book into a network of applications, including but not restricted to commentary. Such a book typically has at least five aspects: as self-referencing text; as portal; as platform; as machine component; and, as network node. An interesting aspect of such processing is that the author's relationship to his or her work may be undermined or compromised; indeed, it is possible that author attribution in the networked world may go the way of copyright. The processed book, in other words, is the response to romantic notions of authorship and books. It is not a matter of choice (as one can still write an imitation, for example, of a Victorian novel today) but an inevitable outcome of inherent characteristics of digital media..." Read the full article

What do you think about the future of books? What do you think they will look like?

Feel free to post your opinions of the site in the Teaching Forum message board.

These tips are provided by the Department of Information Technology instructional support team. If you have any questions on these tips, or wish to offer your own, please feel free to contact Linda Beith at lbeith@ccri.edu. View an archive of past technology tips