1. Using MS Word's Reviewing feature to track changes to a document.

All of Word's reviewing functions are accessible from the Reviewing toolbar, which is a collection of icons that look like this:

If you do not see this toolbar at the top of the Word application window, you can make it visible by clicking on "View > Toolbars" and checking "Reviewing" in the list of toolbars that appears in the drop down menu.

When made visible, the reviewing toolbar will look something like this in the context of the other toolbars you have visible:

The "insert comment" tool.

Put your cursor in the place where you want the comment. Move your mouse over the icon that looks like a yellow sticky note (shown in the toolbar above). Click on that icon with your mouse. Now when you type, your typing will be a comment that will be indicated in the text of the document. As soon as you click anywhere else in the document you will no longer be writing part of the comment.

Using the reviewing tools to track edits to a document.

You can type in the regular way in Word, or in the “Track Changes” way. In the “Track Changes” way, the changes appear in a different color. Any deleted material is still shown off to the side. Thus, this Tracks all Changes, indicating both the changes and the original. In the sentence below, the word “faculty” was changed to “community” and the word “entire” was inserted.

I hope this is a useful resource for the entire Eckerd facultycommunity.

If you click on the icon that looks like the last of the “Reviewing” icons shown above, Tracking Changes will start. If you click on the same icon again, “Tracking Changes” will stop. This icon toggles back and forth from “Tracking Changes” to “Not Tracking Changes.”

Many people find this “Track Changes” feature to be very useful when editing written work. Some professors use it when they edit students’ work and some require students to use it when they edit their peers’ work. Personally, I find it most useful when I am involved in submitting a grant or paper on which two or more people are working.

However, if you are submitting a grant proposal, you probably won't want all the “Comments” and “Tracked Changes” showing. The first and second icons in the list of “Reviewing” icons allow you to go to the previous and next change or comment respectively. The third and fourth icons respectively allow you to accept or reject changes. You can accept or reject the all the changes or the changes one by one. Up to a certain limit, each author will have different colors for their changes.

2. Using Word to create web pages directly.

If you save a Word document to the web others cannot view it unless they have a program such as MSWord or OpenOffice on their own computer. If you save material as a Web Page, any browser can view the material. You can save a Word document directly as a Web Page. However, please be sure the name of the document does not have anything in it but letters, numbers, period, hyphen, or underscore. (Most people like to put in spaces but this may mess up some browsers.) Using any of these in the name of the document will really mess things up (/, ?, &, “, ‘, #)

Be sure the web page ends in .htm or .html (Mac users often fail to check. Windows usually does this automatically.)

If you are going to have pictures in your Word document/web page and/or plan to have several documents linked together, be sure and create a folder for this web site. Put all your documents and pictures into this folder. Be sure your Word document is saved as a Word document in case you need to return to it. Then from “File” choose “Save As.” A window opens up. Be sure it is ready to save the web page in the correct place. Then, in this window where it says “save as type” select “Web Page.” Check that the name is correct and save the document. Sometimes some of your formatting is lost, so check that everything looks correct.

Please note: With web pages it is almost impossible to control exactly how the page will be seen by the viewer, since different browsers, different size screens, and different resolutions will render the picture differently.

3. Using Word to create PDF documents.

If you want for the page to look the same for all viewers, you can save the page as a PDF document. The program for viewing PDF documents is free and anyone can put the program on their computer. I understand that the recent Mac version of Word allows you to convert Word documents to PDF directly. For Windows users, there is a nice program called CutePDF that will enable this. (Click here for instructions for obtaining this program.) Once you have installed this program on your computer, you can save the Word document as PDF by going to the “File” option and selecting Print . One of the options that will appear is the option to Print to PDF. When you select this, the CutePDF will print a PDF version of the document to your computer. Just be sure it puts it in the place where you can find it.

4. Putting Internet links into web pages.

As you know, Internet links are words (or pictures) in documents which have special features. When the document is viewed in a web browser, the cursor will turn into a “finger” when the cursor passes over the link. If the viewer clicks on the link, a different document will be seen in the browser. In your documents you may want to put in absolute or relative links. Relative links will send the viewer to a different page that you created. These words, “ another one of my documents (see original Word document),” is a relative link that I created. The words, “go to Eckerd College home site,” is an absolute link that I created. Absolute links will begin with http://. Absolute links usually do not go to pages that you created.

If you are creating a relative link from one document to another, it is easiest if you first create both documents without any relative links and save them to the same folder.

To create either type of link, highlight/select/drag over the words that you want to use as the link. Then choose the “Insert” option from the menu and select “Hyperlink” from the choices. Into the address line type the web address, starting with http:// for absolute links and typing JUST THE NAME OF THE OTHER DOCUMENT for a relative link. Be sure to include the extension for the document, such as .htm, .html, .doc, etc. Now save the document once again.

When you want to move (publish) a copy of your document to a place where others can see it, just move the entire folder and all links should remain valid. However, always check things out after you move the folder. (For helpful hints on publishing material, please click here.)

Almost everything that can be done with the Microsoft Word program can be done with the OpenOffice program, and the OpenOffice program can do a lot of additional things as well.

[B1]This is a comment here between “indicated” and “in”.