How to accept all tracked changes in one go

Open the document in Write by Zaweba and choose Review, then Accept all. Every tracked change in the file is accepted at once, leaving a clean copy with the edits in place and the markings gone. Reject all does the opposite. Both happen in a single undo step, so Ctrl+Z puts everything back if you change your mind.

What tracked changes are

When someone edits a .docx in a word processor with tracking switched on, their changes are recorded rather than simply made. Added words show in colour, deleted words are kept but struck through, and formatting changes are noted. The person who wrote the document can then see exactly what was changed and decide whether to keep each edit.

Documents arrive this way all the time: a contract back from a solicitor, a report edited by a manager, an essay returned by a tutor, a club newsletter checked by the chair.

How Write shows them

Write shows tracked changes as coloured text, so you can read through and see what was altered before deciding. It does not record new tracked changes of its own. Edits you make in Write are simply made, which keeps things straightforward when you are the one finishing the document.

Accepting everything step by step

Read the document through first, with the changes showing, so you know what you are agreeing to. When you are happy, open the Review menu and choose Accept all. Write accepts every change across the whole document: insertions, deletions, moves, formatting changes, paragraph changes, and table rows that were inserted or deleted.

It also reaches into the parts of the document people forget. Changes in headers, footers, footnotes and comments are accepted too, so nothing is left behind in a corner of the file.

The whole thing is one undo step. If you accepted too soon, a single Ctrl+Z restores every change as it was.

When to reject instead

Reject all removes every change and returns the text to how it was before the edits. Use it when you want the original back, perhaps because the edits were made to the wrong version, or when you want to start again from your own text and add only some of the suggestions by hand.

Write accepts or rejects as a whole document. If you want to keep some edits and lose others, one approach is to accept all and then reverse the few you disagree with by editing them yourself, using the coloured text you read earlier as your guide. Saving a copy before you start makes that easy to check.

After accepting

Look at the comments too. Comments often explain why a change was made, and they stay until you delete them. Use the Review menu to step through them, then delete them or delete all comments when everything is settled.

Then save. Save as .docx to send back to someone who uses another word processor, or keep it in Write's .zawr format, which is a .docx inside. Export as PDF gives a fixed final copy, with real text and fonts embedded, which is often what a solicitor or an office wants for the record.

Accepting tracked changes is one of those jobs that used to need the same program the editor used. With Write by Zaweba it takes a minute, offline and with no account.