Running Word 2013.

I'm doing a markup on my document, a mystery novel (Sold to the publisher, yay!) and I'm okay with how Track Changes works but I'm trying to display a larger portion of the screen for the document itself and a smaller zone for the parallel markup display to the right, which shows who did the markup. It's all my markup anyway, but I want to shrink the right-hand and mostly blank comment panel for now, and make the document display section larger if possible, maybe toggling the right-hand mostly blank comments zone on and off if possible.

Maybe later when I get the doc sent to and from the publisher in the editing process, I will need to read the comments, but right now I want to make that zone more slender and have the document itself a larger amount of the display, for my weak old eyes, ha ha.

Help menu is useless.



Thanks!

Have you tried using the Revisions pane, which shows to the left of the document? That can be resized, whereas the balloons you're now using can't. The Revisions pane also has vertical and horizontal options, so you can choose where it gets placed.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

You can decrease the width of balloons by changing the "Preferred width" in the Advanced Track Changes Options dialog box.

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Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks, especially Stefan. Works just fine. I can now adjust the width as needed.

Please enter a request that the Help listings need to be reviewed. I tried to enter several combinations of the thing I was looking for, such as "track change comment width" but the Help listings were oblivious to my request, ha ha.

I'd be interested in what Help entry actually brings up that info which you gave me.

Anyway, thanks, I'm on "track" and working with the publisher for my novels. They bought all 3 existing private eye novels and will be publishing them in paperback and e-book this fall.

For me, that means about a quarter million words to re-edit and revise with their editors. Thankfully I'm a pretty fast typist and have good knowledge of Word except for some of the tweaks needed to fix it just right. And my new HP laptop is working great, so my publisher was quite happy to find that I know how to use Word for Track Changes, which greatly helps the process along. Will soon be doing book signings and so on. Keen, eh?

Thanks again for the prompt and good help, folks!

You are welcome!

As far as Word Help is concerned, I'm afraid it seems to be getting less helpful with each new release... :-(

Good general references are the various web sites devoted to Word, such as http://www.shaunakelly.com, http://word.mvps.org, http://wordfaqs.mvps.org, http://www.gmayor.com, http://jay-freedman.info/ and http://gregmaxey.mpvps.org.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional