Learn Legal: MS Word's New Simple Mark-Up Feature and the Need To Be Alerted

Some of you are lucky to work in large firms with Meta Data Scrubbers so that you do not send out documents with comments and track changes that the client was never ever supposed to read. It was meant for internal use only. Some of you will be in smaller firms where you have to be at least alerted to the fact that you are about to save a marked up file and therefore you should be aware of this before you just send the document out so that you can accept all changes, delete certain changes, get rid of comments etc. based on the instructions given by the attorney. According to a PC World article and I see this myself all of the time, "Edited documents no longer display bright-red and blue added or deleted text. (Of course, if you go to the settings you can certainly set up the document for the usual strike through and double underscore look). But, what if the default simply has the document using the Change Bars alone which are shown as vertical lines in the margins." So, after you save and share a document, those hidden tracked changes could easily wind up being viewed by the wrong person—in some cases causing a major problem between firm and client. Word 2013 and 2016 has a setting that will warn you that you're about to save a marked-up file, but you must activate the setting manually. Do the following: File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options. Then choose the option to have Word pop up a warning message before you save, send, or print a document that contains tracked changes. Big firm or small firm, I would always have this active. One of the few that teach top-tier legal www.advanceto.com