Make track changes to permanent COLORED text

[Melody]

Hi,

I have a document that has a lot of track changes. I want to convert these
to regular colored text so that they still show up as a change but cannot be
accidentally accepted or declined.

I am using Word 2003. I tried edit and replace but that didn't work.
Unless I didn't do it right. Is there any way to easily change the
formatting of the track changes so that when they are accepted they show as
colored text and not black text.

Thanks.

 

[grammatim]

Create a pdf With Markup. You can Show Insertions or Show Deletions.

But once you've Accepted the changes, they are not changes, they are
part of the text. You could tag them all with a Character Style in a
color.

 

[Melody]

I can't create a pdf with markup. Our documents are done in templates and
the pdf macro is set to accept all track changes before it pdf's.

Ultimately what I need is a pdf showing all the changes with bookmarks. The
only way I know to do that is to have the changes be in colored text rather
than as track changes. However, the document I have was heavily edited using
track changes. I also want to change it to colored text so that no one can
accidently accept or delete the changes.

How would I tag them with a Character Style. I'm trying to look for a
simple way to do this rather than applying to each individual change in the
document.

 

[grammatim]

Then don't use the pdf macro! I don't know anything about Word2007,
but I understand it includes a "Save as pdf" option that would be
somewhere in your Print dialog just like "Print to file" is.

Track Changes has to involve some sort of hidden character styles that
carry the color and strikethrough/underline information. Maybe there's
some way to access them with macros or VBA.