How to Turn Off Track Changes in Document in LibreOffice

This tutorial explains how to turn off or completely remove track changes in a document in LibreOffice Writer.

Table of Contents

Why You Might Want to Remove Track Changes

If you work in an environment where your document goes through a series of reviews, chances are that you are already familiar with the track changes feature in LibreOffice. Although this is a useful feature for visualizing the changes made in a document, there may be times when you want to remove it from your document altogether.

There are mainly three common reasons why you might want to turn off track changes in a writer document.

Finalizing the document: When your document has already been reviewed and is ready for finalization, you want everything to be clean, without any leftover markers or notes present in the document.

Printing: When you want to print a document, you need to turn off track changes to avoid accidentally printing the editing markups and notes.

Clarity: When there are many tracked changes in a document, it can be difficult to read and scan through the content. Thus, removing or turning off track changes in a document makes it easier to read and helps you focus on your work.

Disabling Track Changes in LibreOffice Writer

Step 1: Open the document that have track changes enabled.

Step 2: Uncheck the Record option by going to Edit > Track Changes > Record at the top menu bar.

Step 3: If you’ve enabled the tabbed UI and cannot see the top menu bar, go to the Review tab on the ribbon bar. The Record button will be highlighted and enabled.

Click on the Record again to disable track changes. Once you disable the track changes, LibreOffice will stop recording any further changes made to the document.

Enter the password, if it’s password protected.

Note: If you’ve password-protected the track changes, LibreOffice will prompt you to enter the password before it stops recording changes in the document.

Accept or Reject Changes Made in Document

When you stop recording changes in LibreOffice Writer, the changes that were already made will still be there in the document, but they won’t be recorded anymore. You can decide to keep those changes in the document or remove them by accepting or rejecting them accordingly.

Accepting a change means that you’re happy with the change made and want to keep it in the document. This can be useful when the document has gone through several rounds of edits and you’re satisfied with the final version.

Rejecting a change means that you’re not happy with the change made and want to remove it from the document. This can be useful when the change was made in error, or you decide that it doesn’t fit with the rest of the document.

By accepting or rejecting changes, you can finalize the document and remove any remaining markers or notes that were associated with the track changes.

Show the Already Tracked Changes in the Document

If you want to view the changes that have already been tracked in your document, you can enable the Show button in LibreOffice Writer.

Step 1: First, go to the top menu bar and click on Edit > Track Changes and select Show. This will allow you to see all the changes made to the document, including any additions, deletions, or formatting changes.

If you are on the Tabbed UI, you can also go to the Review tab on the ribbon bar and select the Show button. When it’s enabled, the button will be highlighted, and you can see the changes that were made in the document.

Remove the Tracked Changes in the Document

If you want to remove the changes that have already been tracked in your document, you can do so by following these simple steps:

Step 1: You have the option to accept or reject all the changes at once. To do this, go to Edit > Track Changes and click on either Accept All or Reject All depending on what you need.

Tips: On the tabbed UI, you can find these options within the Review tab.

Step 2: Once you’ve accepted or rejected the changes, save the document, either by pressing Ctrl + S on your keyboard or clicking on File > Save from the top menu bar.