Use Microsoft Word’s Track Changes Feature to Polish Your Documents
October 12, 2010 
6 Comments
Let’s say you want to apply for a job. You’ve just typed a cover letter and updated your resume, and you’ve checked both of them for spelling and grammar errors. As far as you can tell, they look perfect.
Should you go ahead and email them to the company now?
Not yet! You should let somebody else proofread them before sending them out. A friend or family member can catch errors that you (and the spell check) may have missed. They can also give you a fresh perspective on things like word choice, what types of information to include, and even the page layout. And the more professional your resume and cover letter look, the better you’ll look as a candidate!
Proofreading can be as simple as asking your roommate to look at your resume on your computer, but you may also want to consider using Word’s powerful Track Changes feature. Track Changes lets the reviewer make any changes they want, and then you can look over them and decide which changes you want to keep. All of the changes will be marked with a different text color, so it’s easy to tell exactly what was changed.
Sometimes, the reviewer may just want to make a suggestion or ask a question, rather than changing something. They can do this by adding comments to your document. The comments will show up in the margin, so you’ll be able to see them easily.
There’s just one final step: Make sure you accept or reject all tracked changes and delete all comments before sending out your document. Otherwise, anyone who reads your document can view them, and a stray comment could be just as damaging to your resume as a spelling or grammar error.
The Track Changes and Comments features in Word 2010 and 2007 are located in the Reviewing tab (in Word 2003, they’re in the Tools and Insert menus). For full instructions on using these features, check out our Reviewing Documents lesson, or watch the video below.
I usually do same when I write something before hitting the submit button. I let my Boyfriend to reread my Writings and find errors in grammar and punctuation. Not so hard now like before because theres a lot of software to use which is effective. And so many non native English writer now that do write because they have this English checker tool for grammar.
While Microsoft Word’s spelling and grammar checker catches a lot, it doesn’t catch everything. Not everyone has a person review their work, so you’re ahead of the game!
Hi.
Thank you very much for the video. It is really helpful. I am from Asia and I am taking a test for a Secretary’s job selection at International Company.
I didn’t know much about proofreading, and I know all about it
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Best wishes,
Em
Hi.
thank you for the video it was very helpful to me now i really understand thank you so much.
Sincerely,
Amanda
I am preparing a form to be used at the Sheriff Department. I am wanting to learn how to prepare a FILL IN on a line. SAMPLE: NAME: ________________ now on this line I want a FILL IN area. How do I make that happen with Word 2010?