How to prevent accepted tracked changes from carrying over into an excel + word + outlook email to 50 people?

November 30, 2011 4:04 PM

Hi everyone, Hoping someone can help me sort this problem ... It's a excel + microsoft word document + mail merge to outlook email to 50 people. I am trying to help someone out - this is is as it just as it was described to me: Track changes were accepted and turned off and the email looked as it should - so off went 50 customized emails. ..unfortunately the sent email then shows that all the emails are sent showing all of the tracked change revision markings! Sorry if this is too vague. Thanks for your efforts :)
posted by anewnormal to computers & internet (3 answers total)

If the email has been sent out, there is nothing you can do now.

What likely happened is that "track changes" was turned on to document editing changes in Word (Excel and Outlook has nothing to do with your issue). However, instead of selecting "accept all changes in document", somebody probably chose "show final without markup" or something.

The best thing to do is to *not* use Mail Merge to send out emails - it will save you this kind of embarrassment for sure (and using Mail Merge can get your domain blacklisted by an ISP).

Instead, use MailChimp. It looks nicer and is super easy to work with (with none of the embarassment of Word).
posted by KokuRyu at 4:12 PM on November 30, 2011 [2 favorites]

In the future you should cut and paste your text into a new document that never tracked any changes. That will ensure the redlines don't show up.
posted by rainydayfilms at 5:16 PM on November 30, 2011

Newer versions of Word (at least since Word 2007) have an "Inspect Document" function (in 2007 it is under the big round button on the top left, in 2010 I think it is in "Home"). You can have it remove any revisions and comments before saving your true Final version.
posted by i love cheese at 5:20 PM on November 30, 2011