Hello, my name is Erin.
I’m a professional copy editor who shares writing tips for the real world on my blog at ErinWrightWriting.com.
Today we’re going to copy and paste text with comments and Track Changes in Word from one file to another.
If you want to copy comments separately from the text or other Track Changes,
please see my blog post on that topic linked below.
I’ll be using Microsoft Word for Office 365, which is currently the same as Word 2019.
The steps are the same for Word 2016 and similar for Word 2013 and Word 2010.
However, your interface may look slightly different in older versions of the software.
Before we begin, I would like to share this important privacy alert:
When you paste text with comments and Track Changes into someone else’s file,
your user name or initials will appear with the copied comments and Track Changes.
If you don’t want your user name or initials to appear in the other person’s file,
remove your user information before copying the text.
I have explained this process in a separate video, which is linked below.
Also note that this process copies and pastes comments and Track Changes from all reviewers,
even if you are only viewing comments and Track Changes from specific reviewers when you copy the text.
To begin, open the file that contains the text you want to copy.
Once there, select the Review tab in the ribbon.
Turn off Track Changes in the Tracking group.
Note that Track Changes is turned on when the icon’s background is darker than the rest of the ribbon
and turned off when the icon’s background is the same color as the rest of the ribbon.
It must be off to copy and paste comments and track changes.
Next, select the Home tab.
And then select the text you want to copy.
Once the text is selected, select Copy in the Clipboard group.
Alternately, you can press Ctrl + C on your keyboard
or right-click on the selected text and then select Copy from the pop-up menu.
Now, open the second file that should receive the copied text.
And then select the Review tab in this second file.
Once again, turn off Track Changes in the Tracking group.
Next, select the Home tab.
And then place your cursor where you want to paste the copied text.
Once your cursor is in place, select Paste in the Clipboard group.
Alternately, you can press Ctrl + V on your keyboard,
or right-click where your cursor is placed and then select Paste from the pop-up menu.
The text with comments and Track Changes edits should now appear in the second file.
If the comments and Track Changes edits don’t appear with the copied text,
select the menu arrow in the Paste Options pop-up menu
and ensure that the first icon in the drop-down menu, which is Keep Source Formatting, is selected.
Be sure to Save the file to save your newly pasted text.
The transcript for this video along with many other writing tips appears on ErinWrightWriting.com,
which is linked below.
Feel free to leave me a comment if you have a question about Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat
that you’d like me to address in the future, and please subscribe to my channel
and give this video a thumbs-up if you found it helpful.
Thank you so much for watching!