How Do I Terminate View Changes on Emailed Documents?

[M. Edward]

Hello:

Every time I send a document, the view goes from "final" to showing all of
the modifications which is embarrassing. How can I turn this off???

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

This cannot be turned off in the most recent versions of Word. Your options
are to go ahead and process the changes (accept or reject) so that there are
no more tracked changes in the document, or -- better still -- to send the
document out as a PDF so that you can control how others see it. If you need
to retain a version containing tracked changes, you can save the document
under a new name before processing the changes.

When you send out a document containing tracked changes, you cannot control
how recipients view it. If the tracked changes are embarrassing, they're not
any less embarrassing just because you think you've hidden them. Anyone
receiving/viewing you document is perfectly free to set the view to
something other than final. In the most recent versions of Word, this
happens automatically -- and, by and large, it prevents a lot of problems.

Before Word 2003 (I believe that's when the change took effect), a document
retained the Final setting when you sent it out. Unfortunately, this was the
source of many problems for many users--documents acted "funny" because
people weren't aware that they contained tracked changes. Now, at least,
recipients know that the document contains tracked changes.

 

[M. Edward]

Herb:

Thank you for your timely and important response. There needs to be a
non-PDF solution to this issue so that a "final - clean" document can be
created which eliminates all of the changes. This way, the history of the
document as well as its sources are protected.

 

[Herb Tyson [MVP]]

Well... there *is* a non-PDF solution, as I indicated. Save the file under a
new name, accept the changes in that document, save it, and send that one
out. That way, the tracked changes are retained in the original.

The only way to prevent the embarrassment of the recipient seeing the
tracked changes is to NOT sent the changes to them. Saving a clean copy
could be streamlined by recording a macro.

--
Herb Tyson MS MVP
Author of the Word 2007 Bible
Blog: http://word2007bible.herbtyson.com
Web: http://www.herbtyson.com