side by side

Question

I would like to open my document "side  by side" and be able to edit it and compare both versiones.

Answer 1

If I understand your request correctly, you want to view a single document both without any edits and with edits that you're making (rather than two separate documents). Follow these steps:

• On the View ribbon, in the Window group, click the New Window button. That creates a second window showing the same document.
• Also in the Window group, click the View Side by Side button.  In the title bars of the two windows, you'll see a number after the file name: one is "1" and the other is "2".
• Activate window "1".
• On the Review ribbon, in the Tracking group, click the Track Changes button to turn it on.
• Next to the Track Changes button, set the top dropdown to "All Markup". Then click the Show Markup dropdown and select Balloons > Show All Revisions Inline. (This will prevent Word from putting things in balloons in the right margin, which will be mostly invisible because the half-width windows are too narrow.)
• Activate window "2".
• On the Review ribbon, in the Tracking group, set the top dropdown to "Original". This window won't show any of your edits.

You must be aware that this method involves two "views" into the same document, which will contain all of your edits. You aren't saving a copy of the original document, unless you do that separately before you start editing (which is a good idea anyway).

When you're satisfied with the edits, go to the Review ribbon, click the down arrow on the Accept button, and choose Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking. Then save the document.

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An alternative to this procedure is to open a separate document that's a copy of the original. To do that, on the File > Open page, right-click the original file and choose "Open a copy" (or in the Open dialog box, select the original file, click the down arrow on the Open button, and choose "Open as Copy"). You'll get a new document that looks exactly like the original. Save it with a different file name. Also open the original. On the View ribbon, click the View Side by Side button (notthe similarly named "Side to Side" button in the Page Movement group). In this arrangement, you don't need to use Track Changes, although you can if it's useful.

Answer 2

Hi hothotte,

Have you checked this thread?

Please feel free to post back if you still need help on this issue. 

Regards,

Ivy