I am editing a document in Word version 11 using the track changes option. When I first input my edits it shows a time stamp and my initials as the editor for each edit, as usual. However, when I save the document, everything then reverts to a blue color and all of my edits change to "author" with no time stamp. I have tried following other advice I've read in other forums and nothing has worked. I tried saving the document which was a docx as a doc. That did nothing. I tried to copy the whole document and paste into a new document, and when I do that all of the previous edits disappear. The other suggestions have referred to other versions of Word that obviously have different tabs that my version doesn't have so I can't use those suggestions. My edits should be distinguishable from other edits that others have made to the document. How can I fix this? Thanks!

ok, I finally figured it out. You go to Word, Preferences, Personal Settings, Security. Then you uncheck the box next to "remove personal information from this file on save." This worked for Word version 11. It worked for both doc and docx documents. Obviously how you remedy this will differ depending on what version of Word you have. But understanding that it is a security setting is helpful. For some reason I didn't understand that, but now it makes sense. I just wasted a lot of time trying to figure this out. I hope someone else will benefit from reading how to fix this.

I found a solution that was different and wanted to share. When my file was converting all comments and changes to "author", I saw that there was a privacy setting checked to "Remove personal information from file properties on save".

File -> Options. A dialog box "Word Options" will open. Select the "Trust Center" pane and then "Trust Center Settings". This will open a new dialog box called "Trust Center".

In this box, select the "Privacy Options" pane. In the Document-specific settings section, you'll see the "Remove personal information from properties on save" box. This was checked for me and was causing the "Author" change on save. Unchecked fixed my issue immediately.

-J

The above options do not exist/work for Office 2016 for Mac? Any idea how to solve this problem?

EDIT: I was able to solve the problem. Go to Tools --> Protect document --> Uncheck "Remove personal identifying information on save."