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How can I eliminate format balloons and unwanted right side margin on Word documents? Using Word 2003 and Office 2010 Beta.
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Answer accepted by question author
If it's just the balloons and markup margin you don't want to see, in Change tracking options, set balloon use to never.
Pam
Answer accepted by question author
In 2010 you can turn track change on and off on the Word status bar at the bottom of the screen. I believe that also works in 2003.
If you don't see the option in 2010 right click the status bar and choose Track Changes. Then a button will appear on the status bar to let you turn this feature on and off.
If this answer solves your problem, please check Mark as Answered. If this answer helps, please click the Vote as Helpful button. Cheers, Shane Devenshire
Answer accepted by question author
It sounds like you're using Track Changes. If you don't want to track changes in your document then you'll need to turn off Track Changes (On the Review tab, in the Tracking group, click Track Changes) and then Accept all changes in the document, also found on the Review tab.
If you want to track changes but don't want to see formatting changes on the screen, then on the Review tab, in the Tracking group, click Show Markup and turn off Formatting. Or you can use the Final view to suppress them from view on your screen. Note, however, anytime you turn off the view of track changes, they'll only be suppressed from your view and others will be able to see the revisions if they open the document. The only way to prevent track changes from being created is to not use track changes.
~Beth Melton Microsoft Office MVP
Well, I really do not understand the programming logic here. I am editing a document this evening and its late. I am in track changes mode and have just entered a large and technical paragraph. When I hover over the text, I get this big balloon with that same text in it. Why? The font size is smaller so it is considerably harder to read and it is hovering over the text I just entered and blocking a large portion of it.
But it does inform me that I just entered this text. Is any of this useful in any way? This user fails to see any logic here at all.
If I turn off balloons in Track Changes, it turns off the comments panel. Hmmm. I wanted to turn off balloons, not comments, but the two seem to be tied in the programmers mind.
What I would truly like to be able to do is just turn off balloons everywhere and permanently, in all Office applications. But not comments.
The reason is that they are almost universally obnoxious, take time away from what I would prefer to be doing, and almost never provide any useful information. Is it possible to JUST turn off balloons, or have balloons ballooned to the point where everything is now a balloon?
Alternatively, would it be possible to invoke or add a feature so that just like real balloons, they can be set to just float away after a set few seconds?
Perhaps the option you're looking for is "Show document tooltips on hover"? You can find it in Word Options, on the Display tab. To view Word Options, click File (or for Word 2007, click the Office Button) and then click Options (or for Word 2007, Word Options.)
Note that this will also turn off viewing Comments on hover as well but you can display them in balloons in the right margin. On the Review tab, click Show Markup/Balloons/Display only Comments and Formatting in balloons.
Personally, I turn off the document tooltips and show revisions (and comments) in balloons. I have yet to be able to completely follow inline revisions...
~Beth Melton Microsoft Office MVP
Well, I really do not understand the programming logic here. I am editing a document this evening and its late. I am in track changes mode and have just entered a large and technical paragraph. When I hover over the text, I get this big balloon with that same text in it. Why? The font size is smaller so it is considerably harder to read and it is hovering over the text I just entered and blocking a large portion of it.
But it does inform me that I just entered this text. Is any of this useful in any way? This user fails to see any logic here at all.
If I turn off balloons in Track Changes, it turns off the comments panel. Hmmm. I wanted to turn off balloons, not comments, but the two seem to be tied in the programmers mind.
What I would truly like to be able to do is just turn off balloons everywhere and permanently, in all Office applications. But not comments.
The reason is that they are almost universally obnoxious, take time away from what I would prefer to be doing, and almost never provide any useful information. Is it possible to JUST turn off balloons, or have balloons ballooned to the point where everything is now a balloon?
Alternatively, would it be possible to invoke or add a feature so that just like real balloons, they can be set to just float away after a set few seconds?