Zoho Writer User Guide

Document Review

Effective document review requires the ability to receive and manage feedback while keeping the document's essence intact. Zoho's document review features are designed with both authors and editors in mind. In addition to tracking changes and inserting comments, you can also lock sections of a document (so that no one else can edit it), filter comments and changes made by particular users, and @mention your colleagues to get feedback from specific people. At any point, as the document owner, you can use the Pause Collaboration feature to lock the document completely; then, when you're ready for the next round of feedback, you can resume collaboration.

How can I enable Track changes for my document?

View the changes as they are made by your collaborators using Track Changes. While collaborating on an online document, the owner of the document can enable the track changes mode, which then tracks all the insertions, deletions, and changes made by the collaborators distinctively in the document. Later, the changes can be either accepted or deleted by the owner of the document from the review tab. All collaborators with read-write and read-comment access can switch on track changes in the document.

To enable track changes:

  • 1Click the Review button
    at the top of your document to switch to review mode.
  • 2Turn on the switch next to Track Changes. Now any edits by the collaborator will be tracked and can be viewed in the review pane.
  • 3Click the All Markup drop-down to select other view for your document. You can view the content with all the edits (All-Markup) or view it with all the changes accepted in the No Markup mode. You can also view the original document before the edits were made.
Enable track changes

How do I pause collaboration on my document?

You can temporarily pause collaboration on any document, which suspends the activity of other collaborators and the document remains locked until you turn it on again.

To pause collaboration:

  • 1Click the Review
    button at the top of your document to switch to review mode.
  • 2Turn off the Collaboration switch, which pauses the collaboration period for the document. Now the active collaborators can only view the document but cannot make any changes.
  • 3Turn on the switch, once you are ready to resume collaboration.
Pause collaboration

How do I lock sections of a document for review?

You can lock the sensitive part of a document so that they are not altered by other collaborators. You can lock selected or unselected content based on your preference.

To lock sections:

  • 1Select the text.
  • 2Click the Review button
    at the top of your document to switch to review mode.
  • 3Click the lock document
    icon under Collaboration. A drop-down list will appear.
  • 4Click Lock Selected content or Lock Unselected Content which will lock either the selected text or everything but the selected text.

Note :If you want to allow a specific user to edit the locked content, click Advanced options in the drop-down menu, add the user in the Allow Editing For field and click Lock.

Lock sections

How can I see the status of the collaborators in the document?

Once you invite people to view, edit, or comment on your document they are added to the collaboration process. You can also view the status of each collaborator and see who has viewed, yet to view, or is active in the document.

Note : You can check the status of your collaborators for the documents you own and have shared it with other users, or for documents which are shared with you with Read/Writer or Read/Comment access.

To see the status:

Click the drop-down arrow next to the Share button at the top-right of your document. You will see the collaborators list with the status.

Note: If you are not the document owner, you will see a Shared with you button instead of Share.

Access receipts

How can I turn on notifications for changes?

In a collaborative environment, you share many files with others which may be updated many times over a day. Instead of checking every time whether changes have been made to the document , you can enable automatic notifications. You can also choose when you'd like to be notified.

To turn-on the notifications:

  • 1Click the Review
    button at the top of your document to switch to review mode.
  • 2Click
    the icon under Collaboration. The Notification Rule window is displayed.
  • 3Click the checkbox for the type of notification you wish to receive.
  • 4Select the Set as default for all new documents checkbox to save the notification rule for all your documents.

Note : You won't receive notifications for the changes you make to the document. You'll only receive notifications when your collaborators make changes and when you are not active in the document.

Turn on notifications

How can I notify collaborators of the changes?

If you want to get an immediate response from your collaborators to the changes you made, notify collaborators option comes in handy. With just a short message, you can update a single or multiple collaborators about the changes and avoid sending multiple emails.

To notify collaborators:

  • 1Click the Review button
    at the top of your document to switch to review mode.
  • 2Click the
    icon under Collaboration. The Notify Collaborators window will be displayed.
  • 3From the To drop-down list, select the category of collaborators to notify.
  • 4Enter the subject and message for the collaborators and click Send.
Notify collaborators

How do I insert comments?

You can insert comments related to the review of a document while you collaborate. This will help the team fix issues faster.

To insert comments:

  • 1Select document text.
  • 2Click the Comment
    icon in the pinnable tool pallet. Alternatively, click the More Options
    icon in the top-left corner of the screen and go to the Insert tab. Click the same icon.
  • 3Type your comment in the box and click Add. The comment will be added to the document.
  • 4To reply to any comment, click the Reply button below any comments, add your reply and click Enter.

Tip : If you do not want to reply to a comment and still want to approve of it, you can hit the Like button.

Insert comments

How can I resolve/delete a comment?

After the comments have been fixed, you can resolve or delete any comment in the document. While resolving fades the comment highlight, keeping the comment intact, delete action removes the comment from the document permanently.

To resolve/delete comment:

  • 1Hover your mouse on the comment to view additional options. Click Resolve. A green tick appears at the corner of the comment, and it is marked as resolved.
  • 2To delete the comment, hover your mouse on the comment and click the Delete
    icon.
Resolve/delete comment

How to I accept/reject multiple changes in the document?

Once in a while, you might have many changes in your document which might be tiresome to accept or reject individually. In such cases, you can accept all or reject all changes in just a click.

1. To accept/reject all changes at once:

  • 1Click the Review
    button at the top of your document to switch to review mode. A right pane is displayed with the edits made to the document.
  • 2Click the Changes tab, and click the
    icon at the right corner of the pane. Select Accept all or Reject all. A confirmation message is displayed, since the changes as irreversible. Once you accept or reject the changes, you won't be able to go back to the edited version.
Accept/reject all changes

Selecting blocks of text to accept/reject changes

You can also select a particular block text and accept/reject multiple changes at once.

To do this, simply select blocks of text using your pointer, right click and select accept or reject selected changes.

Accept/reject all changes

How can I direct my comments to a specific person?

When many collaborators are working simultaneously in a document, it might get tricky to direct your comments to any specific user. In such cases, you can make use of the @ mention feature which helps you to reply to any specific user or pull in people outside the collaborators to give their opinion or feedback.

To direct comments:

  • 1Select a text, phrase or sentence to which you want to add the comment. A pinnable tool pallet will appear.
  • 2Either click the Insert Comment icon in the tool pallet or right-click on the text and click Add Comment from the menu.
  • 3In the comment box, type @ and the name of the user you want to call upon. Select the appropriate user from the list displayed, and continue adding your comment. The person you have tagged will be notified via email and will be able to view the document using the link shared in the mail.
Direct comments

How can I filter comments/changes from a specific author?

If your document is being reviewed by multiple authors, the comments and changes can run for pages. You can prioritize the comments by filtering the comments or changes from any specific author and fix them first before moving on to the next author.

To filter comment/changes:

  • 1Click the Review
    button at the top of your document to switch to review mode. A right pane is displayed with the edits made to the document.
  • 2Click the icon
    in Comments and Changes tab, and click Filter by author > Author name.
Filter comments

How do I mask a piece of content in a document?

While collaborating on a document, you can choose to conceal a piece of content you think is too sensitive to be shared as such.

To mask a piece of content:

  • 1Place the cursor where you want the sensitive data to be included.
  • 2In the Tool Bar, under the Collaboration section, click on the fourth icon
  • 3A tiny text box with the mask icon will appear in the doc. Write/paste the content that is to be masked inside the text box.
  • 4When you share the document, the masked portion alone will appear asterisked to the other collaborators.
Mask Content

What are the different ways you can view your document while working with the Track Changes on?

Once your document is sent for collaboration and the edits are made, the three different Markup views can help you to get an idea of how the final document would look like, both with and without the edits. The idea here is to give you a distraction-free view of the document from the highlighted edits. The Markup modes are placed right next to 'Track Changes.'

  • 1All Markup - To view the document with the edits highlighted.
  • 2No Markup - To see how the final document would look like if the edits were to be accepted. The edits/tracked-changes are only temporarily hidden. And will showup the next time the document is opened or when the mode is changed to 'All Markup.'
  • 3Original - To see how the original document looked like by temporarily hiding the tracked-changes.

Note: The Markup modes are not to be confused with accepting/rejecting the edits. This is only to get a bird's-eye view of the document if and when the proposed edits are accepted, or not. To delete the tracked-changes permanently, either Accept/Reject them.

Working With Trach Changes On

How do I keep track of the changes in my document?

Version History helps you keep track of all of the edits that were made since your last visit. You can see what has changed over time, easily.

To keep track of the changes:

  • 1Click on the dynamic icon, next to the document name, notifying when the last edit was made.
  • 2This will take you to a page where all versions of your document are listed.
  • 3Click on "See what's changed" icon at the top. Clicking on it will enable you to view the changes that were made for the day, over a weak and over a month.
  • 4You can also customize a specific period to distil out edits that happened within that period.
Keep Track Changes