How to Remove Edit Markings on a Microsoft Word Document

By Lily Medina

Accept or reject all changes to remove the edit marks.
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After someone uses "Track Changes" to edit your document, you receive the document full of markings, cross-outs, red text and balloons. To remove the edit markings, you simply need to accept or reject those edits. Although you could examine each change individually and then remove it by pressing "Accept" or "Reject" on the ribbon or on the menu that appears when you right-click a change, that's a tedious process. To get rid of all the edit markings quickly, you can just accept or reject all changes in one simple function.

Step 1

Click the "Review" tab on the ribbon.

Step 2

Click the "Accept" button, in the "Changes" group, if you want to accept all edits so that they remain part of the document but appear as normal text, not as edits. Make sure to click the lower half of the "Accept" icon, which displays the word "Accept" and a downward arrow. Next, click "Accept All Changes in Document" at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

Step 3

Click the lower half of the "Reject" button -- labeled with the word "Reject" and a downward arrow -- if you want to remove all changes from the document and revert to the original, unedited version. Click "Reject All Changes in Document" at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

Step 4

Click the top half of the "Track Changes" icon -- a picture of a page displaying back and red text, accompanied by a pencil -- if the icon appears in orange. This will turn off Track Changes. If the icon is blue, don't click it; Track Changes has already been turned off.

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