How to Track Changes on Google Docs?

November 17, 2021

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In this tutorial, you will find out how to track changes on Google Docs with the suggestion mode. We recommend you study this manual carefully and start practicing.

Checklist of crucial points we aim to highlight here:

Switching to Suggestion Mode
Suggestion Mode Tools & Functions
Working with Added Edits
Other Features

Watch the video from https://thegoodocs.com/ and find out how to track changes on Google Docs with the suggestion mode:

Considering that Google Docs in the first place is meant for real-time collaborative work by multiple people, you would want to keep track of all changes made, review and discuss them, and then decide which ones to add to the final version. In Google Docs, it is done via Suggestion mode, similar to the track changes function in Microsoft Word.

Switching to Suggestion Mode

Assuming that you are working on the document with a group of people, coworkers, changing something also affects the others. That’s why there’s such a nice feature to suggest edits before adding, deleting, or replacing something so that others could also consider it.

On the document, go to the right side of the toolbar on top, to the mode button. Press it. And in the menu, select the Suggesting item. Now, as the mode has changed, the edits you will make in the document won’t be applied until reviewed by the editor or the owner

Suggestion Mode Tools & Functions

So, how does Suggestion mode work in Google Docs? As we said earlier, it means to suggest edits before adding, deleting, or replacing something.

For example, you can add something to the text in the Suggestion mode

Put a cursor where you need to add something and start writing. You will see a sample on the screenshot below

Here’s how the deleting looks in the Suggestion mode

You highlight the text and press the common delete or backspace button. And what happened is that the text was not deleted but got crossed out and put in such a box, showing the edited area

And most importantly, it made a dialog window pop up on the right to show who and when submitted which edit

Now in this dialog window, you can add people with the at sign (@) to start a conversation on an edit

Or you can replace the text. And it’s being done almost the same way as deleting

Highlight a part of the text, delete it. But then immediately enter something instead. We are going to replace “Early in the morning” with “10-11 a.m.” as a sample. Now you can see the change in the dialog window. It shows that we have suggested replacing “Early in the morning” with “10-11 a.m.”.

Working with Added Edits

On the other side, as the document owner, we can review edits made by other team members, comment on them, discuss them, and then decide which ones to add to the final version and which to dismiss.

So, on the document, there are edits suggested by another person. We can press their dialog window. And it will highlight for us the area where the change was made

So, another person replaced “Dust all surface” with “Clean the floor”, for instance. But let’s say that we want to discuss this point. So, we go to the text entry field and reply that “I will do this tomorrow. At first, I am going to dust all surface, and then I will be ready to clean the floor)”, for example

Next up, another person added one more responsible coordinator to the task, and we agree. So, we accept the suggestion by pressing the checkmark over here

And respectively, if we don’t like the change, we simply decline it by pressing the crossmark next to a checkmark

Other Features

NB! And this is it, but … In an example with the text, Suggestion mode means that you can actually change anything on the document. You can enter, replace and delete text. Then suggest changing its formatting to bold, italic, increase the font size, and so on. You can even add images and drawings in the suggestion mode. Basically, everything that you can do as an editor but as a suggestion to be approved or declined by the others in the team.

We hope this tutorial will help you learn how to track changes on Google Docs in the Suggesting mode. Good luck!

Written by

Team TheGoodocs

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