Hi, I'm using MS Word 2007.

I'm working on modernization of a text from the 1600's, and for every spelling change I make I am required to bold the altered word. I am also supposed to be tracking changes I make to the unrevised document.

I have been using MS Word's Track Changes option, and I set it so that all newly inserted text was to be made bold. Nice and easy.

However, I'm also doing annotation for the document, and with these tracking settings all of my footnotes are now in bold text. This is a problem, because I can't go back and un-bold the footnotes.

Is there any way that I can have the tracking changes so that words inserted into the body text are bold, while references I insert are not?

Thanks.

How did you set it so that your altered words became bold? Can you upload a sample of it so that I can take a look?

When you use footnotes for your annotations, they become part of the "regular" text and are also treated as insertions (and Word assigns the formatting you specified in the Track Changes Options dialog box).

Perhaps you could use Word's comment feature to add you annotations? You can view them in the Reviewing pane or in comment balloons in the margin (the latter is the default).

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

For the future, and without changing the way you work too much, it sounds as though you need to toggle Track changes so that it's not active when you add a footnote; not a major inconvenience if you use the keyboard shortcut. (ctrl+shift+E in 2010; can't remember what it is in 2007)

For what you've already done, you might need to consider a painstaking, one-off correction: turn Track changes off, accept each change – to clear the formatting of the footnote – and then turn Track changes on and reapply the change in the body text.

If you recognise all your changes, you could even use a character style to identify them: a) type in the new spellings; b) apply the style to the first occurrence; c) step through the document and use ctrl-Y to repeat the Apply style.

Hope you don't have to spend too much time unbolding the footnotes!