I don't know what's changed, but in the past, when I wanted to see revisions and changes to a document in Microsoft Word on my Mac it showed me what was inserted and deleted. Now, however, it has zillions of little balloons on the side of the document. What the heck? How do I change Microsoft Word so revision tracking shows up the way I prefer?

Dave's Answer:
As someone who works with a lot of different documents, I'm with you in preferring the "old style" revision display in Microsoft Word for Mac. A red line through a word to show it was deleted, the word in blue to show it was added, it was all easy and made sense.

This is a Microsoft product, however, so it should be no surprise that there's a way to tweak and customize it to what you prefer rather than just being stuck with the newest, fancy way to show revisions and tweaks to your document.

To start out, here's what the newer, modern revision tracking looks like in Microsoft Word for Mac:

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of this either.

To change it, go to "Preferences...", which you can find under the "Word" menu:

Open it up and you get all sorts of pretty little icons, including the one we seek:

Click on "Track Changes" and about 2/3 of the way down you'll see a section labeled "Balloons":

Simply uncheck these two checkboxes, click "OK" to save the changes, and your edits will be in the classic style:

There's a lot of stuff you can tweak and customize with this version of Microsoft Word, so while you're looking at your Preferences, make sure it's all configured as you desire too.

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About the Author:
Dave Taylor is known as an expert on both business and technology issues. Holder of an MSEd and MBA, author of twenty books and founder of four startups, he also runs a marketing company and consults with firms seeking the best approach to working with weblogs and social networks. Dave is an award-winning speaker and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs.

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