Preparing for Distribution

Before distributing a document to your boss, your teachers, colleagues, subordinates, or friends, there are several things that you may want to do in order to prevent the following phenomena, which may detract from the great impression you are hoping that your document will make.

• Prevent dates from changing
• Remove red, blue, and green wavy lines under words and phrases
• Remove revisions, private comments, and hidden text

The following sections explain these phenomena and how to prevent them from occurring in the documents that you distribute.

Preventing Dates from Changing

When you ask Word to insert the current date into your document, for example, by pressing Alt+Shift+D, Word creates a DATE field, which displays the current date. Like other Word fields, the DATE field can be updated after the date changes by placing the cursor within the date and pressing F9. By default, the DATE field is also updated automatically whenever the document is opened. Thus, when you distribute your document, the date that your recipients will see in it will be the date when they open it, and this date will automatically change every time that they open the document.

There are several ways to freeze the date in your document. One approach is to lock the contents of the DATE field. This approach is suitable if you want the date when the document was last modified and saved to be shown in your document. To lock a DATE field (or any other field) so that it will not be updated again, place your cursor within the field and press CTRL+3 or CTRL+F11. To unlock a field so that it can be updated, place your cursor within the field and press CTRL+4 or CTRL+SHIFT+F11.

Another approach is to change the DATE field to a CREATEDATE field. This approach is suitable if you want the date when the document was first created to be shown in your document. To change a DATE field to a CREATEDATE field, press Alt+F9, which toggles between a mode in which the output of all the field codes in your document is displayed and a mode in which the field codes are displayed. Now you can simply place the cursor immediately before the word DATE and type the letters needed to change it to CREATEDATE. If you do not want the time when the document was created to be shown, after CREATEDATE, type a space followed by \@ "M/d/yyyy". You can modify this code to match the date format for your location. Then press F9 to update the modified field, and then press Alt+F9 to return to the mode in which the output of the fields is displayed.

Of course, you can delete the field altogether and type the date that you want to appear in your document.

Removing Red, Blue, and Green Wavy Lines

By default, Word automatically marks words that it considers to be misspelled by adding a red wavy line under it. Word marks words that it considers to be incorrect (misspelled) in the context that they are used with a blue wavy line. Similarly, Word automatically marks words and phrases that it considers to have a grammar error with a green wavy line. Both of these features can be turned off in an individual document without disabling spellchecking and grammar checking in your other documents. Thus, you can take advantage of these features while you are preparing a document and then turn them off before you distribute it. The procedures for turning off these features in Word 2010 and in Word 2007 are different.

• In Word 2010, click the File tab, click Options, and select Proofing. Then in the Exceptions for section, select the open document in which you want to hide the wavy lines, and select the Hide spelling errors in this document only and Hide grammar errors in this document only check boxes.
• In Word 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button, click Word Options, and select Proofing. Then in the Exceptions for section, select the open document in which you want to hide the wavy lines, and select the Hide spelling errors in this document only and Hide grammar errors in this document only check boxes.

After you make these changes, save your document.

Removing Revisions, Private Comments, and Hidden Text

By default, Word displays the markup in your document. Markup includes any comments that have been inserted and any revisions that have been made in your document with change tracking enabled. If you configure Word to hide the markup in your document on your computer, your recipients may still see it when they open your document on their computers. If you or someone else inserted any comments into your document, review them and delete the comments that you do not want your recipients to see. If change tracking was enabled, accept or reject the revisions that were made and turn off change tracking. For detailed instructions, see Remove Tracked Changes and Comments in Word 2016 for Windows if you are using Word 2016, Remove Tracked Changes and Comments if you are using Word 2013 or Word 2010, or Remove Tracked Changes and Comments from a Document if you are using Word 2007.

If you formatted any text in your document as hidden, be aware that anyone can easily reveal your "hidden" text by pressing Ctrl+A to select the body of the document or your footnotes and then pressing Ctrl+Space. Pressing Ctrl+Space removes all character formatting, including the hidden format, from the selected text.

Distributing Documents with the New File Format

If you distribute a document with the new file format introduced in Word 2007 to recipients who have older versions of Word, they may not be able to open it. If you are sending the document as an e-mail attachment, you can solve this problem by mentioning in your e-mail message that your document can be opened in earlier versions of Word after installing the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint File Formats, which is a free Microsoft download. If you are distributing your document in a different way and are concerned that some of your recipients will not be able to open it, consider distributing an alternative version saved as a Word 97-2003 document.