Track changes

You can track changes to body text in a word-processing document (but not text in text boxes or tables). Changed text appears in a different color than the surrounding text, and change bars appear in the margin. You can choose whether tracked changes are visible, and how they appear.

You can review tracked changes and accept or reject them individually or all together.

Track changes to text

  • Choose Edit > Track Changes (from the Edit menu at the top of your computer screen).

    A review toolbar appears at the top of the page.

If you need to make changes that you don’t want to be tracked, move the Tracking slider in the review toolbar to Paused, make changes, then turn it back on.

To turn off change tracking completely, click Change tracking menu button, then choose Turn Off Tracking.

View and hide tracked changes

  • In the review toolbar, click Change tracking menu button, then choose an option:

    • Markup: Displays deletions with a strikethrough and new text in a different color than the surrounding text.

    • Markup Without Deletions: Displays only the new text in a different color than the surrounding text. Deleted text is hidden.

    • Final: Displays text without markup, and deleted text is hidden. Pages continues to track changes, so if you change to a different view, you can see them.

Accept or reject changes

To be sure all changes are visible, click Change tracking menu button in the review toolbar, then set the change tracking view to Markup.

You can accept or reject changes in any of these ways:

  • Move the pointer over an instance of marked text, then click Accept or Reject.

  • Select a range of text, then click Accept or Reject in the review toolbar.

    All tracked changes within the range are accepted or rejected together.

  • Click Change tracking menu button in the review toolbar, then choose Accept All Changes or Reject All Changes.

    If you accept all changes, markup is removed and the changes are kept. If you reject all changes, markup is removed and the text reverts to the original.

See Add comments and highlight text to learn how to change the author name and markup color.