Google Docs is most people\u2019s first taste of the ease and convenience of cloud, though trends suggest it\u2019s likely to become the norm soon. Meantime, many jobs that were once done on Microsoft\u2019s productivity suite are moving over the Google. But one standby of the Microsoft system that we just can\u2019t seem to quit is the \u2018track changes\u2019 feature. Sometimes \u2018comments\u2019 just aren’t enough. What happens when you want to track changes on a Word document in Google?<\/p>\n
Fully integrated<\/p>\n
When it was launched, Google didn’t offer track changes integration, pushing business users away. In mid-2014, that changed and full integration was rolled out. Here\u2019s how it works.<\/p>\n
When you upload a Word document that has tracked changes to Google Docs, the changes become \u2018suggested edits.\u2019 You can work in the document much as you would in Word. When you want to make a change or edit you can go to the \u2018editing\u2019 menu,under \u2018comment\u2019 and \u2018share\u2019 in the top right corner. Click on it and select editing > suggesting from the dropdown, and you can insert suggested edits, just the way you would with tracked changes in Word. Then, when you export that same Google Doc as a Word file, your suggested edits will be saved as tracked changes.<\/p>\n
And one better<\/p>\n
Google Docs offers a feature that Word doesn’t, that makes the whole process of editing and revising a lot easier. No, I\u2019m not talking about comments. Rather, it\u2019s Google Docs\u2019 Revision History function that stands to save many workers\u2019 bacon. One of the reasons tracked changes exists in the first place is because without it, there\u2019s no way to go back through a word document and see what changes were made, who by and when. But Google Docs has exactly that feature.
\nRevision History is accessed via the File menu. Scroll down the drop-down and you\u2019ll see the option about midway down. Keyboard macro buffs may prefer to press command + option + shift + G on a Mac, or ctrl + alt + shift + G on a PC. Here\u2019 you\u2019ll see every major revision made on the document, who made it and when, and you\u2019ll have the option to access that text or return the document to a previous version. And if you\u2019re looking for a minor revision, they\u2019re saved too, under \u2018show detailed revisions\u2019 at the bottom of the menu.<\/p>\n
With these tools it\u2019s easy to send documents back and forth between a Google Docs user and someone whose primary productivity suite is Microsoft Office, with no real synching issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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