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Sending a Word contract back to the other side: tracked changes, comments and earlier wording to deal with before you sign

Last updated: 27 October 2026

This page is for anyone who negotiates a contract as a Word file: a company returning a supplier's draft, a freelancer answering a client's terms, an office manager handling a lease. It is about what the .docx carries back to the other side, not about what to agree: that is for you and your lawyer. Electronic-signature services, and what they add to a file, are outside it. How to accept or reject changes is in accept or reject tracked changes, and a property contract marked up by the other side's lawyer in property listings and contracts. Sending the file to your own lawyer or accountant is a different case, covered in sending Office files to a lawyer or accountant. The examples here are typical cases, not reports of real ones.

What a negotiated draft can carry

Two kinds of tracked changes in one file

In a negotiation, tracked changes do two jobs. Some are the proposal: the other side needs to see each one, and redlines are how the parties work. Others are your own side's working: a colleague's first attempt, your adviser's alternative wording, a figure someone typed and someone else changed. In a file passed around inside your organisation, both kinds sit together, each with its author's name; Microsoft's page Change the author name says the User name setting "also provides the name and initials that are displayed in comments and tracked changes."

Changing the view does not separate them. Microsoft's page Track changes in Word says that the Original view shows the document without tracked changes and comments, but "any tracked changes or comments in the document that have not been accepted, rejected, or deleted remain in the document", and, in its section on printing, that "Hiding changes doesn't remove them from the document." The page Accept or reject tracked changes in Word adds: "Choosing the No Markup view only temporarily hides changes. They will be visible again the next time someone opens the document." Clearing a type of markup under Show Markup only changes your view; the Track changes page says such markup "automatically displays each time the document is opened by you or a reviewer."

Sending only the changes you propose

The plainest way to send the other side your proposals and nothing else is to let Word work them out from two clean texts:

1. Keep the version the other side last sent you, as they sent it.
2. In your working copy, settle your side's discussion: accept or reject every tracked change, so that the text reads as you want to propose it, and delete the comments.
3. Compare the two. Microsoft's page Compare document differences using the legal blackline option says the option "compares two documents and displays what changed between them in a third new document", and that "The documents that are being compared are not changed." Choose their version as the original and your settled copy as the revised one. That page is for Word for Windows; on a Mac, Microsoft's page Compare and merge two versions of a document gives Review › Compare › Compare Documents. If either still has tracked changes, the same page says Word offers to accept them first and then shows "changes in the revised document" as tracked changes.
4. The comparison's options include what to compare, "such as comments, formatting, and text changes". Look at the new document's comments before it goes, and keep only those written for the other side.
5. In the new document, check whose name the changes carry (Review › Show Markup › Specific People lists the reviewers), and its properties, as below.

If you prefer to edit the other side's file directly with Track Changes on, do it in a fresh copy of their version, not in the one your colleagues worked in, so that the only changes in it are the ones you made for them.

Comments: for them, or for you

A comment that explains a change to the other side ("updated to match clause 9") is part of the proposal. A comment between colleagues is not, and it can say the most: how far you would go, what the other side's last draft got wrong, what to concede next time. Marking it resolved does not take it out. Microsoft's page Using modern comments in Word says the default view hides resolved comments, while the list view "includes all active and resolved comments". Open the list view in the copy that goes, and delete every comment that was not written for the other side.

Hidden text, properties and the document system

Microsoft's Document Inspector page lists more that a Word file can carry:

• "Word documents can contain text that is formatted as hidden text": a drafting note, or an alternative clause kept for later. The same page says the inspector "cannot detect text that was hidden by other methods (for example, white text on a white background)".
• Office keeps "the name of the person who most recently saved a document"; the document properties can also hold "send-for-review information, routing slips, and template names".
• A document saved to "a document management server" might contain "additional document properties or information related to this server location", and documents "can contain custom XML data that is not visible in the document itself".

Microsoft's page View or change the properties for an Office file describes custom properties as "properties that you define". A contract started from another deal's file can still hold that deal's matter number or client in them. One by one, these are in Word's company, manager, template and custom properties; Word's editing-session ids are in the rsid fingerprint, and data stored with content controls in custom XML and embedded objects.

When the draft comes back

A returned draft shows you what the other side tracked. It does not necessarily show everything they changed. Microsoft's Track changes page says that when Track Changes is off, "Word stops marking changes". A change made with tracking off, by mistake or not, looks like your own text. Before you accept anything, compare their returned file with the version you sent, in the same way as above: the comparison marks the differences in what you ask Word to compare, such as text, formatting and comments, whether they were tracked or not. Microsoft's page lists what you can choose to compare, such as comments, formatting and text changes; the properties and the data inside embedded objects are not among them.

The returned file also carries their side's names and, sometimes, their internal comments. That is their concern; for your next round, start again from a clean copy rather than editing on top of their file with your own working in it.

The copy you sign, and sending it as PDF

The signing copy should hold the agreed text and nothing else: every tracked change accepted or rejected, every comment deleted, Track Changes off. If the other side locked tracking, Microsoft's Track changes page says that "While tracked changes are locked, you can't turn off change tracking, and you can't accept or reject changes", so ask them to unlock it or to send a clean copy, and compare that copy with the last agreed draft.

Many people send the signing copy as a PDF. Microsoft's page Save or convert to PDF or XPS gives Word's options: "To include tracked changes in the PDF, under Publish what, select Document showing markup. Otherwise, make sure Document is selected", and "If you want to include document properties in the PDF, make sure Document properties is selected." If you do not want them in the PDF, find that box in the Options and clear it. Settle the changes in Word first anyway: the PDF is made from the text as it stands, and the .docx stays in your files and is often the next draft. What a PDF still carries is in .docx or PDF: which carries less.

Before the draft goes back

1. Keep your working file, and the other side's last version as they sent it.
2. In a copy of your working file, accept or reject every tracked change, delete every comment, and turn Track Changes off.
3. Compare their last version (original) with that copy (revised) as a legal blackline, and work in the new document it makes.
4. In the new document, open the comments list and keep only the comments meant for the other side. Show the hidden text, and delete what is not part of the proposal.
5. On Windows, go to File › Info and look at Author and Last Modified By; then Properties › Advanced Properties, and clear Title, Subject, Keywords, Comments and the Custom tab if they do not belong in this copy. On a Mac, see Document Inspector on a Mac.
6. On Windows, Document Inspector (File › Info › Check for Issues › Inspect Document) can then remove the document properties and hidden text. Do not select Remove All next to Comments, Revisions, Versions, and Annotations: that would take out the tracked changes that are your proposal. Microsoft recommends using it on a copy, "because it is not always possible to restore the data that the Document Inspector removes." Afterwards, look again at the names the tracked changes carry.
7. Read the headers and footers: a "Draft – internal" footer or a file path in a field is easy to miss.

How to check the copy yourself

1. Open the copy with All Markup and the comments list showing. Under Review › Show Markup › Specific People, the list of reviewers should hold only the names you expect.
2. For a closer look, make another copy, rename it to .zip and unzip it:
   • In word/document.xml, and in the header, footer, footnote and endnote parts, each <w:ins and <w:del carries a w:author and usually a w:date; the text of a deletion is in w:delText. Look also for w:moveFrom, w:moveTo and elements ending in PrChange, which mark moves and formatting changes.
   • word/comments.xml holds the comments, and word/people.xml lists people who commented or made changes.
   • docProps/core.xml holds the author and the last person to save the file; docProps/app.xml the company, the manager and the template name; docProps/custom.xml the custom properties; the customXml folder, data a document system or content controls keep.
   • word/_rels/settings.xml.rels can hold the full path of the attached template, and word/settings.xml document variables (w:docVars).
3. Search every part for a figure, a name or a phrase from your internal discussion that should not be in the copy.

What ScrubDrop does

ScrubDrop reads a .docx in your browser; the file is not uploaded. It lists what it finds: the tracked changes with who made them, the comments with their authors, the properties (the custom properties among them), hidden text, editing-session ids, custom XML and document variables, and the other kinds it supports. For free, one file at a time, it removes the properties, removes the comments and accepts the tracked changes. Server properties that a document system keeps as custom XML data stay with the custom XML, which only Pro removes. ScrubDrop Pro can instead reject all tracked changes, or accept or reject them author by author, for example to accept one colleague's changes and reject another's.

ScrubDrop settles every tracked change it handles: it does not keep some of them as tracked changes. For the copy that goes back with your proposals marked, prepare the changes in Word as above, and in ScrubDrop untick tracked changes, so that they stay as they are while it removes the properties. Comments go all together or not at all: if a few are meant for the other side, untick comments too and delete the others in Word. For the signing copy, leave both ticked.

ScrubDrop Pro also removes hidden text, editing-session ids, custom XML and document variables, and links to other files, including the path of an attached template. Text hidden through a style or the document's defaults is refused when you choose to remove hidden text, because ScrubDrop cannot yet tell exactly which text that is; remove the hidden formatting from the style in Word first, or untick hidden text. A document with building blocks (a glossary part) is refused. ScrubDrop does not compare versions, does not change the visible text apart from the tracked changes it settles, and does not know what you agreed: reading the draft is yours. It reads the cleaned file again with separate parsers before it offers it.

Questions

Sources: the Microsoft pages linked on this page were checked on 27 October 2026. ScrubDrop is not affiliated with Microsoft. This page is not legal advice.