No Ticket Needed

Appearance

5 min fix 10 min read Recently reviewedBeginner

By , IT support technician

Quick Answer

On the Review tab, click the lower half of Accept and choose Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking, then click Delete > Delete All Comments in Document. No Markup only hides changes.

How to Accept or Remove All Track Changes in Word ​

Applies to: Microsoft Word (Microsoft 365, Word 2021, Word 2019, Word 2016), Word for Mac, Word for the web
Article Type: How-To
Last Updated: 2026-07-29

Summary ​

The document is finished, the review is over, and it needs to go to the client with no red strikethroughs and no margin comments about the client. This article gets you from a marked-up draft to a genuinely clean file, and shows you how to verify it — because the view that looks clean on your screen is not the same thing as a file with nothing left in it.

Prerequisites ​

  • Microsoft Word on Windows, Mac, or the web. Document Inspector is available in the desktop app only.
  • Edit access to the document. If the document opens Read-Only or with a Restrict Editing pane, see the troubleshooting table below.
  • No admin rights required.

Instructions ​

1. Accept All Changes in One Click ​

Accepting a change applies the edit and deletes the markup that recorded it.

  1. Open the document and click the Review tab.
  2. Find the Changes group in the middle of the ribbon. It holds Accept, Reject, Previous, and Next.
  3. Click the lower half of the Accept button — the part with the small downward arrow and the word Accept under it. Clicking the top half accepts only the change at the cursor and jumps to the next one.
  4. Choose from the menu that drops down:
    • Accept All Changes — applies every revision and leaves tracking switched on.
    • Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking — applies every revision and turns Track Changes off. This is the one you want when the document is going out.
  5. Every coloured insertion turns black, every strikethrough disappears, and the vertical change bars in the left margin clear.

Verification: On the Review tab, click Reviewing Pane in the Tracking group and choose Reviewing Pane Vertical. The pane opens down the left side of the window with a summary at the top reading 0 revisions. Anything other than zero means changes remain.

Note: Tracked changes inside headers, footers, footnotes, and text boxes are not always reachable with the Next button, but Accept All Changes covers them. This is one reason to use the bulk option rather than clicking through revisions one at a time.

2. Reject All Changes to Restore the Original ​

Rejecting does the opposite: it discards the edits and restores the text as it was before the reviewer touched it.

  1. Click the Review tab.
  2. Click the lower half of the Reject button, immediately to the right of Accept.
  3. Choose Reject All Changes, or Reject All Changes and Stop Tracking to do both at once.
  4. The document snaps back to its pre-review wording.

Tip: Use Original in the Display for Review dropdown before you reject anything. It shows exactly what the document will look like once every change is rejected, without committing to it. Switch back to All Markup afterwards.

3. Understand Why Simple Markup and No Markup Do Not Remove Anything ​

This is the step that saves careers, so it is worth thirty seconds.

The Display for Review dropdown at the top of the Tracking group offers four options: Simple Markup, All Markup, No Markup, and Original. All four are view settings. They change what appears on your monitor. They change nothing inside the file.

Set a document to No Markup and it looks finished — clean black text, no balloons, no margin bars. Send it, and the recipient's copy of Word opens with their default view, which is usually Simple Markup or All Markup. Every deletion, every rewritten sentence, and every internal comment appears on their screen exactly as it appeared on yours before you changed the view.

To see what the file actually contains rather than what your view is showing:

  1. Click the Review tab and set Display for Review to All Markup.
  2. Click Reviewing Pane in the Tracking group. The summary at the top counts insertions, deletions, moves, formatting changes, and comments.
  3. If any count is above zero, the file still carries that content no matter what the page looks like.

Warning: A red vertical bar in the left margin is Word's Simple Markup indicator. If you see those bars, the document has unaccepted changes in it — return to Step 1.

4. Delete Every Comment in the Document ​

Accepting changes does not remove comments. Neither does resolving them. Comments are a separate layer, and they are usually the layer that contains the sentence you would least like the recipient to read.

  1. Click the Review tab.
  2. Find the Comments group, to the left of Tracking.
  3. Click the lower half of the Delete button.
  4. Choose Delete All Comments in Document. Every comment and every reply disappears from the margin.

The menu also offers Delete All Comments Shown, which only removes the comments currently visible under your filters. Use Delete All Comments in Document when the goal is a clean file.

Note: Resolve marks a comment as handled and greys it out. In current Microsoft 365 builds, resolved comments vanish from the modern Comments pane entirely — which makes them feel deleted. They are still in the file, and a recipient can display them by clicking Comments at the top right of the window and choosing to show resolved comments. Delete them properly.

Verification: Click Comments in the top-right corner of the Word window to open the Comments pane. It reads No comments in this document.

5. Turn Track Changes Off So New Edits Are Not Recorded ​

If tracking is still on, the typo you fix after cleaning the document becomes a fresh tracked change — and you send the file believing it is clean.

  1. Click the Review tab.
  2. Look at the Track Changes button in the Tracking group. When tracking is on, the button is shaded or highlighted.
  3. Click the upper half of the button to toggle tracking off. The shading clears.
  4. Press Ctrl + Shift + E instead if you prefer the keyboard. The same toggle applies.

Tip: Steps 1 and 5 combine into one action. Choosing Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking from the Accept menu accepts everything and switches recording off, which removes the chance of forgetting this step.

Note: If the Track Changes button is greyed out and will not toggle, someone switched on Lock Tracking or protected the document. Click the lower half of Track Changes and choose Lock Tracking to see whether Word asks for a password. If it does, ask the document owner directly: "The file has Lock Tracking enabled — send me the password or an unlocked copy."

6. Confirm the File Is Clean with Document Inspector ​

Word has a built-in audit for exactly this. Use it as the final gate before you attach the file to anything.

  1. Save the document first. Press Ctrl + S.
  2. Click File in the top-left corner to open the backstage view.
  3. Click Info in the left-hand list.
  4. Click Check for Issues, then Inspect Document. The Document Inspector dialog opens with a list of checkboxes.
  5. Leave every checkbox selected and click Inspect at the bottom.
  6. Read the results. Each category shows either a green tick and No items were found, or a red exclamation mark with a description and a Remove All button. The categories that matter here:
    • Comments, Revisions, and Versions — leftover tracked changes and comments.
    • Document Properties and Personal Information — author names, the last person to save it, and the file path it was stored under.
    • Hidden Text — text formatted as hidden, which a recipient can reveal.
    • Headers, Footers, and Watermarks — a draft watermark or an internal reference you forgot about.
  7. Click Remove All beside any category you want cleared.
  8. Click Close.

Verification: Run Inspect a second time. Every category you cleared now reports No items were found.

7. Send a Flattened Copy When the File Must Be Clean ​

When the document is going outside your organisation and the stakes are high, remove the possibility rather than checking for it. A PDF has no revision history to carry.

  1. Click File > Export > Create PDF/XPS Document, then click Create PDF/XPS.
  2. In the dialog that opens, click Options.
  3. Clear the Document properties checkbox and the Document structure tags for accessibility checkbox only if you have been asked to strip metadata — leave the accessibility option selected otherwise.
  4. Click OK, choose a location, and click Publish.
  5. Open the resulting PDF and read it. What you see is exactly what the recipient sees.

Tip: Keep the marked-up original. Save the clean version under a different name — Proposal-FINAL.docx alongside Proposal-REVIEW.docx — so the review history stays available if a decision is questioned later. See How to Convert a Word Document to PDF (and Back) for the full export options.

Troubleshooting ​

DANGER

Remove All in the Document Inspector cannot be undone, and it strips more than markup — author names, the document's revision history, and custom properties go with it. Save a copy of the file before you run it, or you lose the record of who changed what and when.

Symptom / ErrorPotential CauseSolution
Recipient sees markup in a document that looked clean to meThe view was set to Simple Markup or No Markup, not acceptedView settings hide, they do not remove. Accept or reject every change (Steps 1 and 2), then verify with Document Inspector (Step 6).
Comments still appear after accepting all changesComments are a separate layer from revisionsClick Review > Delete > Delete All Comments in Document (Step 4). Resolving a comment does not delete it.
Accept All Changes is greyed outLock Tracking or Restrict Editing is onClick Review > Restrict Editing > Stop Protection. If Word asks for a password, ask the owner: "The file has editing restricted to tracked changes — send the Stop Protection password or an unrestricted copy."
Some changes were left behind after Accept AllA Show Markup filter is hiding revisionsClick Review > Show Markup and select every entry, then open Specific People and select All Reviewers. Run Accept All Changes again.
Track Changes switches itself back onThe document was saved with tracking enabledTurn it off and save again (Step 5), or use Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking so both happen together.
My name still shows on the file after cleaning itAuthor details stored in document propertiesRun Document Inspector and click Remove All beside Document Properties and Personal Information (Step 6).
Document Inspector is not in the File menuEditing in Word for the webThe inspector is desktop-only. Click Editing > Open in Desktop App, or accept all changes in the browser and check the file on a desktop before sending.