If you want Flare to track your own edits as you make them, you must first enable the feature. When reviewers open topics in Contributor to review them, the track changes feature is automatically enabled. However, reviewers have the option of disabling the track changes feature, so it is imperative that you communicate with reviewers to establish your workflow, including whether changes should be tracked. Therefore, you can see exactly what the reviewer modified in the returned document. You can then pick and choose which edits to accept or reject. Also, if the topic you sent for review already had tracked changes in it, the reviewer can accept or reject those changes.
how to enable the track changes feature
- Open the
-
Do one of the following, depending on the part of the user interface you are using:
-
Ribbon Select the Review ribbon. In the Changes section select Track Changes.
- Keyboard Shortcut Press CTRL+SHIFT+E.
-
notes
Note: By default, tracked changes are visible only in the editor in MadCap Flare or Contributor. Tracked changes that have not yet been accepted are not visible when previewing the topic in Flare or when viewing any output generated from it. You can preserve tracked changes in PDF and Word output so unaccepted changes will appear in these outputs. See Preserving Tracked Changes in PDF or Word Output.
Note: The track changes setting is not global in a project (i.e., it does not affect other content files open at that time). For example, let's say you have two topics open. With focus on topic A, you enable the track changes feature. If you bring focus to topic B, the track changes option is not enabled for that topic yet. However, if you then open other topics after that point, the track changes feature will be enabled in those topics.
What's Next?
After enabling the track changes feature, you might want to do any of the following.
- Hide and Show Tracked Changes You can hide or show tracked changes in the active document. See Hiding and Showing Changes and Annotations.
- Change User Name and Initials When you first install and launch Flare, your login user name is captured and stored in the Options dialog. The first two letters of the user name are also stored as your initials. This information is employed whenever you track changes. For example, if you add some text in a topic with track changes enabled, your initials are displayed at the beginning of the tracked change so that other users know where the edit came from. You can always change your Flare user name or initials to something else. See Changing Your User Name and Initials.
- Change Display You can change the way tracked changes are displayed in the interface (e.g., in balloons, inline). See Changing the Display of Tracked Changes.
- Change User Color The tracked changes for each user can be shown in a separate color. You also have the option of choosing a specific color for all users. See Changing the User Color for Reviews.
- Find Changes You can quickly navigate to the previous or next tracked change or annotation in the file. See Finding Changes.
- Accept or Reject Tracked Changes You can right-click on tracked changes and use a context menu to accept or reject them individually. You can also use options in the interface to accept or reject each tracked change or all tracked changes in a file. The reject option also removes annotations. See Accepting or Rejecting Tracked Changes.