How To Make Reviewers Comments Anonymous On Word For Mac
How do I remove identifying properties from my Word document? Go to the Review tab; Click the Protect Document tool; Click Remove personal. Or; It may work to simply set Word 2008 on the mac to “remove personal. Saving, or sending a file that contains tracked changes or comments” check box.
John publishes a journal whose articles are peer-reviewed, and the reviewers are supposed to remain anonymous from the person who originally wrote the article. As reviewers (called referees) are reviewing articles, they keep Track Changes turned on so that modifications and comments stand out in the document.
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The problem is that Word, as part of the Track Changes feature, also tracks the name of the person who made a particular change. If the original article author got the article back, all that would be necessary would be to hover the mouse pointer over a change or comment, and the name of the referee would be visible.
It is possible, of course, to tell the referees to make a change or two to Word prior to making any changes in an article being reviewed. Just display the General options (in the Word Options dialog box) and then replace the user's name and initials with a space or some nondescript wording, such as 'Referee 1.' Any changes from that point on will then bear that name, and anonymity will be preserved.
Note that merely deleting the user name and initials in the dialog box will not work; you must use a space or a new word/name. The dialog box will put the original name back in an empty name box and a letter in the initial box.
You can also follow these steps to get rid of identifying information in comments and changes by following these steps in Word 2007:
- Click the Office button.
- At the left side of the screen choose Prepare Inspect Document. Word displays the Document Inspector dialog box. (See Figure 1.)
- Make sure all the available check boxes are selected.
- Click Inspect. Word examines your document for identifying information and displays, in a dialog box, what it finds.
- Use the controls in the dialog box to get rid of any identifying information.
- Click the Close button when done.
Figure 1. The Document Inspector.
If you are using Word 2010 you should follow these steps, instead:
- Click the File tab of the ribbon.
- Make sure Info is selected at the left side of the screen. (It should be selected by default.)
- Click the Check for Issues button (right next to the wording 'Prepare for Sharing.') Word displays a few options you can choose.
- Click Inspect Document. Word displays the Document Inspector dialog box.
- Make sure all the available check boxes are selected.
- Click Inspect. Word examines your document for identifying information and displays, in a dialog box, what it finds.
- Use the controls in the dialog box to get rid of any identifying information.
- Click the Close button when done.
When you are through running the Document Inspector, and assuming you removed any personally identifying information, then the next time you save the document, Word replaces the referee's names with the word 'Author.' There is other identifying information that is removed, as well, so you should only use this method if you don't mind that information also being removed. (Things like author information that is stored in the document's Properties area is removed.)
There is a more selective, but involved, method that can be used to just remove the referee's information. This method will work with any version of Word. Follow these general steps:
- Save the document in RTF format.
- Open the RTF file as text only, preferably using a program such as Notepad.
- Search for the characters 'revtbl' (without the quote marks). This marks the beginning of revision table information stored in the file. It should have entries that look something like this:
- Replace the name (Jane Doe) with some other text, but leave everything else intact. The name can be replaced with text such as 'Copyeditor,' 'Anonymous,' or simply a space ' '. Be sure to leave the curly brackets and semicolon in place.
- Look for and change the names of other reviewers in the revision table.
- Save and close the RTF file.
- Reopen the RTF file in Word. It should look like a normal Word document once again, but the reviewer(s) names should now be changed.
- Save the file in Word document format again.