Accepting Changes by a Single Reviewer

Sometimes, in a document that's been reviewed by several people, it's nice to be able to accept all changes by a single reviewer--maybe the author or a proofreader whose judgment you trust. (Or maybe yourself!) In Word 2002 (XP) and later versions, this is easy:

1. Click View > Toolbars > Reviewing to display the Reviewing toolbar.

2. On the toolbar, click Show > Reviewers.

3. Select the name of the reviewer whose changes you want to accept (and deselect any others that are checked).

4. Click the > Accept Change button (blue checkmark, middle of the toolbar).

5. Click Accept All Changes Shown.

In Word 97, 98, 2000, and 2001, it's not so easy; it requires a macro. This one, in fact:

Sub AcceptRevisionsByAuthor()
Dim aRevision, ThisAuthor As String
For Each aRevision In ActiveDocument.Revisions
ThisAuthor = aRevision.Author
If ThisAuthor = "Jack M. Lyon" Then
aRevision.Accept
End If
Next aRevision
End Sub

If you don't know how to use such macros, you can learn how here:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/editorium/read/message.html?mid=1706922855

When you use the macro, of course, you'll want to replace "Jack M. Lyon" with the name of your choice.

If you want to accept changes for all reviewers *except* Jack M. Lyon, you can change this line--

If ThisAuthor = "Jack M. Lyon" Then

--to this:

If ThisAuthor <> "Jack M. Lyon" Then

You can also *reject* all the changes by a single reviewer. To do so, change this line--

aRevision.Accept

--to this:

aRevision.Reject

In Word 2002 and later, you can reject all changes by a single reviewer by clicking the Reject Change/Delete Comment button (to the right of the Accept Change button) and then clicking Reject All Changes Shown.

Thanks to Anna Marshall for requesting this article.

_________________________________________

READERS WRITE

After reading the previous newsletter on marking revisions for WordPerfect, Adam C. Engst wrote, "[The macro] sounds quite useful, but what about going back in the other direction? Can a macro take styled text from WordPerfect (or other app) and turn it back into revisions and comments?

I tried writing a macro to make this work but was unsuccessful. If you, gentle reader, know of a way to do this, please let me know.

Thanks to Adam for his message.