Getting a Warning for Markup

The Track Changes feature in Word is a great editing tool, as it allows you to show the changes made in a document over time. A related tool, Commenting, allows you to insert comments in a document for any number of reasons. You might not want to share your changes or comments with others, or to print documents that contain these types of markup. In that case, Word includes a way that you can double-check to make sure you don't do this. (This feature was introduced in Word 2002; it won't work in Word 97 or Word 2000.) Follow these steps if you are using Word 2002 or Word 2003:

1. Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
2. Make sure the Security tab is displayed. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Security tab of the Options dialog box.

3. Make sure the Warn Before Printing, Saving, or Sending a File That Contains Tracked Changes or Comments check box is selected.
4. Click on OK.

With this check box selected, Word displays a warning if you try to print, save, or e-mail a file containing either comments or change marks. Since comments and change marks are considered confidential information in many organizations, this option is on the Security tab. (Some people might think it belongs on the Track Changes tab or the Edit tab.)

You should know that selecting this option only presents a dialog box if you do the e-mailing of the document using the menu options in Word. If you close Word and then send the document as an attachment to an e-mail message, no warning is provided.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (3443) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Getting a Warning for Markup.