How to Changing Your Reviewer Color in MS Word 2003

When you have 'track changes' enabled in MS Word 2003 (and earlier), it automatically assigns colors to each reviewer in sequence. I, for one, can't stand to have all of my changes to a document showing in bright, stark RED! It just gets hard to look at if I have a lot of updates to make. Well, if I am the first reviewer of a document, then that's what I'll get.

But you can trick MS Word into giving you a different color.

The sequence of colors is:

1. red
2. blue
3. green
4. purple
5. orange
6. cyan/turquois
7. yellow
8. grey

I personally prefer green, because it is the first color in the list that is easy on the eyes. So, here are the steps:

• Close Word completely (you might need to close Outlook, too).
• Open Word by itself (not by clicking on a document)
• Change your name in User Information Tools -> Options to something other than your real name.
• Turn on "Track Changes" (double click on "TRK" at the bottom of the window)
• Type something into the empty document. It should be red.
• Change your name again in Options.
• Type something else into the document. It should be blue.
• Repeat until you get to the color BEFORE the one you want (see the list above).
• Now put your real name in Options.
• Type something into the document, and it should be the next color, which hopefully is the one you want.

The colors will remain this way as long as Word is open. However, they may reset the next time you start Word.

You can get the color you want every time in a particular document if you add trivial changes as users with different names. The colors will be assigned to the reviewers of the document in alphabetical order, by name (I think). So, if I want green, I make a change with the name “a” (add an empty line at the end, for example), then a small change with the name “b”. Assuming no other reviewers come between “b” and my name, I’ll show up as green. Those changes can then be deleted later, so those fake names no longer show up as reviewers.

This is somewhat of a manual process, so you might want to choose a color that's near the top of the list. :)