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Write.Teach.Tech
Using Microsoft Word to Merge
Peer Reviewed Drafts
by Tonya Howe
Instead of having an obscene number of reviewed drafts
floating around willy-nilly, we will make use of the “Compare
and Merge Documents” feature in Microsoft Word. This feature
allows you to combine multiple documents into a single document,
maintaining all the different peer comments in each. So, if Sally is
having her draft read and reviewed by Biff and Bob, she
doesn’t have to work with two—or even three, if
Sally has been revising on her own—different documents; she
only has to work with one. Plus, Sally doesn’t have to
scrounge around for Biff and Bob’s comments, which are now
arrayed before her like little golden nuggets of wisdom.
Here’s how it works:
- After your peer reviewers have returned your essay,
with electronic comments, to our discussion board, you go in and
download them both to your computer.
- Open the first reviewed draft in Word.
- Using the menus at the top of your screen, go to Tools
> Compare and Merge
Documents:
- This will open a dialogue box where you can browse
through your files and select the second peer reviewed draft
you’ve saved to your computer. Find it, select it, and click Merge.
Be sure the “legal blackline” and “find
formatting” options are turned off.
- Word will merge the two reviewed documents. You will
notice that each reviewer’s comments and changes appear in
different colors; they should also contain each reviewer’s
personal information (name, initials, date/time).
- You can change the way you see this merged document
in several ways. I find keeping the document view in the "print" style
(VIEW > PRINT) is most helpful, because you can see the comment
bubbles off to the side. In the reviewing toolbar, you can also elect
to see the "final showing markup," the "original showing markup," or
either the "final" or the "original" documents without any markup.
- Save this new draft, and begin revising!
Sample paragraphs to work on can be found here:
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