The problem is that this function is glitchy in Word. Sometimes you just can’t get the text to be marked as “moved.” After checking that the Preferences for Track Changes (see figure below) are indeed set to mark moves, try these two solutions:
- Make sure to select the entire sentence right up to the terminal punctuation. Then drag it with a mouse/pointer/whathaveyou.
- After selecting the text that you want to move, use this keyboard shortcut to move the text up or down a whole paragraph at a time:
Mac: ctrl + shift + up arrow
Windows: alt + shift + up arrow
Troubleshooting
‘Move’ tracking doesn’t work for a phrase or just part of the sentence, it has to include the terminal punctuation. You could hack this by adding terminal punctuation, moving the phrase, and then deleting the punctuation. Just be sure to do the adding and removing of punctuation without tracking or it will look very confusing and sloppy.
This is a newer function that may not work on doc files, so make sure they’re saved as docx.
If it just. won’t. cooperate. Leave a comment explaining the move, with or without tracking, based on the needs of your writer.
Got a gnarly Word problem? Submit your problem and we’ll try to answer it in the Q&A thread.
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