Corrupted documents

[Bridie_Will]

I'm an editor who works on a lot of government documents. When they come to me for editing, they look clean, but often have had numerous stakeholders making tracked changes that have then been accepted. Frustratingly, as I work through the document tracking my changes, it can become much slower, start saving frequently and very slowly, and formatting can go out of whack, particularly tables. If this is because previous tracked changes are still in the background, is there a way to clear the back end before I start working on it?

[#2]

@Bridie_Will Are you working in On-Line copies of the documents or are you downloading them to your computer and working on that copy.  The latter is what I would recommend and I would be surprised if you encounter the issue when working on the documents opened from your computer.

Failing that, you could accept all of the prior changes to get a clean copy of the document.  Then save that and make your changes.

[#3]

@Doug_Robbins_Word_MVPHi Doug, yes, I always download the file and work from my computer. When it comes to me, there are no tracked changes visible in the document, but I know numerous people have made changes previously and then they have been accepted. Is there a way to clear the back end?

[#4]

@Bridie_Will Try copying everything EXCEPT for the final paragraph mark in the document and then paste it into a new blank document.

[#5]

Thank you, Doug! I'll try that next time. Cheers.