Like Sheldon, we used track changes with the addendum number in brackets. We also put the addendum number and date in the footer so you could see if you were looking at the latest version of a section. I like the idea of the addendum number immediately after the change because if later addenda affect the same page, you can see which changes were issued with which addenda.
We also issued a matrix-type table of contents with each addendum. It had all project specs with a column for each addenda so you could always see which section was issued with each addendum. This format was also used for projects where not all sections were issued at the same time.
Lynn, unless you use color in other ways, you might trying to set up the track changes settings to have different colors, but same style (all italics for inserts, but user 1 is red, user two is blue etc.). When you print your PDFs you can set this for B&W output; color goes away, but the other stuff is still there. May not work, but might.
Peter, that would take too much coordination and cooperation. And what happens when we share a word doc with a consultant? I shudder to think of the resulting confusion!
I’m pretty sure each workstation person gets to choose what the particular options (color, line or no line). And I think you can also choose something like “automatic” or “by author” as well as how the changes will appear.
MS Word’s track changes text markings are controlled by machine settings, and are not save with the individual files.
If you must deliver Word files as we do for some clients, using track changes presents a problem because the machines will never be set the same. For these clients, we use macros to convert track changes to manual text markings of the client’s choice - bold, underline, strike-through or what ever they want - before delivering the Word files.
For our office we have a macro to set all machines identically. Then when we use track changes every machine produces the same result. We try to deliver specs in PDF so we control the look as they are published.