"Turning off" Track Changes is easy. The problem is that many users don't
realize that turning off tracking merely causes Word to stop tracking the
changes; it doesn't remove the change tracking that has already been added
to the document. To do that, you have to *accept* the changes. To do this in
Word 2002/2003, you click the arrow beside the Accept Change button on the
Reviewing toolbar and choose Accept All Changes in Document. You can delete
all comments the same way (using the Reject Change menu).

That said, documents can contain other sorts of "metadata" such as user
information. Recent versions of Word make this quite easy to remove (there's
a setting on the Security tab of Tools | Options). If you want to be sure of
removing as much personal information from the file as possible, get the
Hidden Data Remover tool at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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all may benefit.

"Ofisteqi" wrote in message
...
Is there a way to turn off Tracked Changes without going through the hoops
found in this article?
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/as...983881033.aspx
From what I've read about Tracked Changes, it appears that there is no way
to 'shut off' this information from being hidden in the document. Of
course,
there are add-in for converting to .pdf etc, but why doesn't Word offer a
setting (one setting and not confusing multiple settings stated in this
article) to turn this 'feature' off.

Can anyone explain what the purpose is of having changes tracked from
Microsoft's viewpoint?

With all of the press lately about legal issues and document retention and
storage, there should be a way to shut this down without attending a
training
session.

Thanks for your feedback.