As a project manager, you typically work on projects with input from a lot of sources. For example, how many times has your whole team helped develop an overall project plan? How many times has a proposal made the internal rounds before it was finally ready for the customer?

Getting feedback and incorporating comments from team members can be cumbersome and confusing. You need an easy and efficient way to track and manage everybody's suggestions.

With Microsoft Word 2002 or later, it's easy to compare and merge documents. Word combines feedback from your reviewers so that you can easily find and accept, reject, or tweak their suggestions.

Compare and merge documents

When you compare and merge documents using Word 2002 or later, Word uses change tracking to highlight differences in text and formatting. When you merge the documents for review, you can choose to pull the comments into the original document, into the document you are currently working on, or into a new document.

To compare and merge two documents

When your reviewers return a document with feedback as an e-mail attachment, Word prompts you to compare and merge their suggestions when you double-click the attachment. Click Yes to see the changes in one document.

You can also manually incorporate the reviews when you open the edited copy of the document later. Click Compare and Merge Documents on the Tools menu. Then select the original document, and click the arrow next to Merge to see a list of options. Click one of the options:

• Merge   Displays the results of the comparison in the original document.
• Merge into current document   Displays the results of the merge in the document that is currently open.
• Merge into new document   Displays the results in a new document.

To compare and merge multiple documents

1. Open Word.
2. Open the document into which you want to merge changes.
3. On the Tools menu, click Compare and Merge Documents.
4. Open one of the documents with changes you'd like to merge.
5. Click the arrow next to Merge, and then click Merge into current document.
6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 until all copies of the document are merged.

Quickly find the changes made

If you want to quickly identify and review the changes made by the people who reviewed your document, you can print a list of the changes. This might be especially useful in creating an agenda to discuss at a meeting or a list of action items.

To print a list of changes made

1. Open the document that contains tracked changes.
2. On the File menu, click Print.
3. In the Print what box, click List of mark up.

Make decisions based on comparisons

After you've pulled together all the feedback with the Compare and Merge feature, you can begin to review the suggestions that the other members of your team have made.

Using Track Changes on the Tools menu, you can accept or reject the changes that your team members have made. You can also delete or respond to comments.