How to Redline a Word Document (and a PDF): Step by Step

How to redline a Word document

To redline a Word document, open it, go to the Review tab, select Tracking > Track Changes and choose For Everyone. Every insertion, deletion and formatting change you make from then on is recorded with your name, shown underlined or struck through, and can be accepted or rejected by the other side. Before sending, compare your version against the one the counterparty last saw and remove any internal comments or metadata.

"Redlining," "marking up," "tracked changes" and "turning a draft" all describe the same thing: proposing edits to a document in a way that shows exactly what changed. The name comes from the red ink lawyers used on paper drafts. In contract negotiation, the redline is the working language between the two sides. Each round goes back and forth as a new redlined version until nothing is left to accept or reject.

This guide covers the Word steps, how to compare two versions when someone edited without tracking, how to redline a PDF, and the mistakes that most often cause problems in a live negotiation. It is written for in-house lawyers and the sales, procurement and operations colleagues who end up negotiating contracts in Word.

Step by step: redlining in Microsoft Word

The steps below follow Microsoft's own documentation for Track Changes in Word. Menu names are for the Windows desktop app; Word for Mac and Word for the web use the same Review tab with small layout differences.

1. Save a working copy

Save the file you received under a new name before touching it, for example MSA_Northwind_v3_OurComments.docx. That leaves you with a clean baseline, which you will need in step 6, and avoids the classic problem of not knowing which file is the latest.

2. Turn on Track Changes

Go to Review > Tracking > Track Changes and choose For Everyone. The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+E on Windows and Cmd+Shift+E on a Mac, per Microsoft's keyboard shortcut lists for Word for Windows and Word for Mac. Microsoft also offers Just Mine, which only tracks your own edits; for a contract, For Everyone is the safer default because it records every change anyone makes to that copy.

Check the user name Word will attach to your changes. It comes from your Office account or Word options, and it is what the other side will see next to every edit. A redline signed "User" or a colleague's name causes confusion in a negotiation.

3. Pick the right markup view

The Markup dropdown on the Review tab (labelled Display for Review in some Word versions) has four views, per Microsoft:

One trap: No Markup only hides changes on your screen. Microsoft notes that the changes are visible again the next time someone opens the file. Hiding markup is not the same as accepting it.

4. Make your edits and explain them

Type directly into the text. Deleted words appear struck through, new words underlined. Keep edits surgical: replacing a whole clause when you only needed to change three words makes the other side re-read everything and slows the round down.

Add a comment (Review > New Comment) wherever a change needs a reason. Good redline comments are short and give the principle, not the whole argument: "Cap should be mutual, see 9.2" does more work than a paragraph. See Microsoft's page on tracking changes and comments for the comment controls.

5. Lock tracking when several people edit

If other people in your team will edit the same file, lock tracking on. On Windows, go to Review > Tracking > Track Changes > Lock Tracking and set a password. While tracking is locked, nobody can turn change tracking off, and changes cannot be accepted or rejected until it is unlocked, as described in Microsoft's Track Changes guide. On a Mac, the equivalent is under Review > Protect > Protect Document.

6. Compare against the version the other side last saw

This is the step most people skip and the one that matters most. Go to Review > Compare > Compare Documents, select the version you received as the original and your edited file as the revised one. Word creates a new document with revision marks for every difference and leaves both files unchanged, per Microsoft.

Word also has a dedicated legal blackline option under Compare, which does the same comparison and shows the result in a third document. Microsoft recommends the "combine revisions" option instead when you need to merge edits from several reviewers.

Run the comparison both ways during a negotiation: on your own outgoing draft, to make sure every change you made is visible, and on every draft you receive, to catch anything the other side changed without tracking.

7. Inspect and clean the file

Internal comments ("Can we live with this? Ask finance") and document properties travel with the file. Microsoft's Document Inspector finds comments, revision marks, versions, document properties, personal information and hidden text.

Save a copy first, because Microsoft warns that removed content cannot always be restored with Undo. In the copy, go to File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document, run the inspection, and remove the categories you do not want to share. Be careful with "Revisions and comments": removing all of them also removes your tracked changes, which are the redline itself. The cleaner approach is to delete internal comments by hand and keep the tracked edits.

8. Send it with a short cover note

Send the tracked version, plus a clean version if the other side asks for one, with a cover note listing the three to five points that matter. The counterparty will read your note before your markup, so it sets the agenda for their next round.

How to redline a PDF

Contracts often arrive as PDFs. There are two workable routes.

Option 1: mark up the PDF itself. In Adobe Acrobat, the comment tools include strikethrough, insert text and replace text. Adobe's guide to marking up text edits is explicit that these annotations do not change the actual text in the PDF; they indicate what should be deleted, inserted or replaced in the source file. This works for a light review but is awkward for a real negotiation, because someone still has to carry every change into the Word original.

Option 2: convert to Word and redline there. Open the PDF in Word and it makes an editable copy, attempting to match the original layout. Microsoft notes in Edit a PDF that this works best with PDFs that are mostly text, and that lines and pages may break at different places than in the original. After converting, save it as a Word file, check numbering, defined terms and tables against the PDF, and then follow the Word steps above.

If the counterparty only ever sends PDFs, ask for the Word version. Most will send it, and it saves both sides a conversion step every round.

Common redlining mistakes

Most redlining problems are process mistakes rather than legal ones.

A few smaller habits help too. Keep one numbering scheme per round (v1, v2, v3) and never overwrite a version you have sent. Resolve or delete comment threads that are closed, so the next reader only sees open points. And when you receive a redline, read the markup in All Markup view, not Simple Markup, so you see the actual wording change and not just a line in the margin.

For reviewing a counterparty redline, Microsoft's page on accepting or rejecting tracked changes covers the one-by-one flow: place the cursor at the start, then use Accept or Reject on the Review tab, and Word jumps to the next change.

Redlining questions people ask about Word

Can you run a redline in Word?

Yes. Word can generate a redline automatically from two files with Review > Compare > Compare Documents: pick the earlier version as the original and the later one as the revised, and Word produces a new document showing every difference as a tracked change, per Microsoft. This is what lawyers mean when they ask someone to "run a redline" or "run a blackline" between two drafts. Our guide on redline vs blackline explains when to use each.

Why isn't my redline showing up in Word?

Almost always because of the view or because tracking was off. Check these in order:

1. The view hides the markup. If the Markup (Display for Review) dropdown is set to Simple Markup or No Markup, the changes are still in the file but not shown inline. Switch to All Markup.
2. Some markup types are switched off. Under Show Markup, make sure insertions and deletions, formatting and comments are ticked. Microsoft notes that markup hidden this way displays again the next time the document is opened, which is why a file can look clean to you and marked up to the recipient.
3. Track Changes was off when the edits were made. Nothing was recorded, so there is nothing to show. Recreate the redline with Compare against the previous version.
4. The changes were already accepted. If someone accepted their own edits before sending, the file is clean. Again, Compare is the only way to see what changed.

How do I make a clean copy of a redline Word document?

Save a copy of the redline under a new name first, so the tracked version survives. In the copy, go to Review > Tracking > Accept and choose Accept All Changes and Stop Tracking, which Microsoft lists alongside Accept All Changes. Then delete any remaining comments and run the Document Inspector (step 7 above) to confirm no revisions or comments are left. Send the clean copy together with the redline, never instead of it, so the other side can still see what changed.

How to properly redline a document?

Properly redlining a document means every change is tracked, attributed to the right person, explained where it needs a reason, and checked before it goes out. In practice: work on a new version, turn on Track Changes for everyone, use All Markup, keep edits small, comment on the substantive ones, compare against the version the other side last saw, and clean out internal comments and metadata. The eight steps above follow that order.

A worked example

Say you are the buyer and the vendor sends clause 9 of an MSA:

9.1 Supplier's total liability under this Agreement shall not exceed the fees paid by Customer in the three (3) months preceding the claim.

Your playbook says the cap should be mutual and set at twelve months of fees. With Track Changes on, the redline reads (deletions shown as strikethrough, insertions in bold):

9.1 Supplier's Each party's total liability under this Agreement shall not exceed the fees paid or payable by Customer in the three (3) twelve (12) months preceding the claim.

And the comment in the margin: "Cap made mutual and aligned to 12 months, in line with the annual term. Happy to discuss carve-outs in 9.2." Three small edits, one comment, and the other side knows exactly what you want and why. For what a standard position on this clause looks like, see our guide to the limitation of liability clause.

When the vendor sends v4 back, run Compare Documents between your v3 and their v4 before reading anything. If they quietly changed "preceding the claim" to "preceding the first claim," the comparison shows it even if tracking was off.

How to do this in Bind

In Bind, the redlining happens in the contract itself, and the result is still an ordinary Word document with tracked changes. Here is the same task in Bind.

Step by step, with the names you will see in Bind:

In-house teams at companies like Slush, the global startup and tech event organizer, and Atria, listed on Nasdaq Helsinki, run their contract work in Bind.

For a broader look at tools in this category, see our overview of contract redlining software and the best redlining software comparison. If your team negotiates the same clauses over and over, a documented clause library or AI playbook is what makes redlining consistent across people.