The first thing I noticed in the ribbon was the appearance of Track Changes: Unfortunately this has offered little comfort to users as they still want to see the track changes effect as they work through it, otherwise they are somewhat flying blind.

Word Online has actually had the ability to track changes for quite some time, however as outlined in this support article: “You can’t see tracked changes in Word for the web but they’re still there.” However the inability to track changes has been a showstopper for many who rely on that feature. The reality is that Word Online offers a far superior co-authoring experience due to the fact that everyone is working on the “live” document, as opposed to the constant synchronisation that occurs when using the Word desktop app. This is a feature that has been asked for by many users a LONG time!

Yesterday while co-authoring a document with Jamie LaPorte, I noticed that within Word Online (currently known as “Word on the web” – but that doesn’t really roll off the tongue) that I had the ability to enable the Track Changes feature. I’m not sure how they track who has been naughty or nice so I suspect this might be one of those features that is flighting to some Targeted Release users but not others. Here’s an early Christmas present from the Office 365 team… but only for some of you.

Track changes not showing strikethrough