Writer accept and reject changes: decide on selected edits

Writer accept and reject changes commands can retain one selected insertion and restore one selected deletion. After this fictional exercise, you can check four literal paragraphs in an open unsaved document; the global pending-change state remains UNKNOWN, and the document is not declared ready to share.

Content checked: 21 October 2026.

What can selective change decisions establish?

Writer accept and reject changes commands let you make different decisions about recorded edits. This exercise keeps one inserted paragraph and restores one deleted paragraph in a single fictional scratch document. Your result is four expected literal paragraphs in an open, unsaved document, not a generally approved or distribution-ready file.

The global pending-change state remains UNKNOWN. That means this walkthrough does not establish that every recorded edit in the document has been reviewed. A clean-looking page, an apparently empty list or the expected four sentences cannot supply that missing conclusion. Keep this limitation attached to the outcome, including when explaining it to someone else.

Use an already-installed desktop copy of Writer on a computer you are allowed to use. Do not bring a client draft, contract, customer name or internal business record into the exercise. Everything below is fictional training text. No account, external reviewer, screen or audio recording, installation or contact with another person is required.

The steps are documentation-based, not a report of an interface test by the author or a client. Fifteen minutes is a preparation target rather than a measured result. Saving, reopening, sharing and exporting are outside the task. Closing the unsaved document must not be described as preserving the reviewed wording.

Start a blank Writer document with three control paragraphs

Open the installed Writer application and choose File > New > Text Document. Check that a new blank text document is open before typing. Do not use an operational file as your starting point. If translated menus or a different interface prevent you from identifying that command, stop rather than experimenting with an existing document.

Type these three sentences as separate paragraphs: Practice item: notebook. Practice pickup: desk. Practice note: keep this line. The full stops belong to the example sentences, not to a list numbering scheme. Keeping each sentence in its own paragraph makes the affected text easier to identify during the decisions.

Check that there are no earlier edits, comments or unrelated paragraphs in this practice document. If existing tracked changes appear, do not clear someone else's work to make the exercise fit. This task does not cover protection removal, reviewer identity changes or repairing a shared review history. Start only from your own empty scratch document.

The first two paragraphs are unchanged controls. A control is text whose wording you expect to stay the same. The third paragraph will be deliberately deleted and then restored by rejecting that deletion. An additional paragraph will be inserted and retained. This gives you two visibly different decisions rather than a blanket tidy-up operation.

Enable recording before making the two edits

Choose Edit > Track Changes > Record before editing the baseline. Record means that subsequent changes are tracked; it does not mean they are approved. If you cannot establish that recording is active, stop. Enabling it after editing does not justify claiming that the earlier actions were recorded for this exercise.

Add a fourth paragraph at the end: Practice extra: paper bag. Then delete the third baseline paragraph, Practice note: keep this line. Leave the item and pickup paragraphs unchanged. An independent insertion and deletion are easier to reason about here than replacing one word and assuming the application will represent that replacement as a single mark.

Check Edit > Track Changes > Show. If recorded changes are already shown, do not select it again and hide them; otherwise enable Show. Stop if you cannot establish the display state. LibreOffice documents Show as a display control. Hiding those marks is not the same as accepting an insertion or rejecting a deletion. The page looking simpler is therefore not evidence that the intended review decisions have happened.

Do not require exactly two coloured marks or assume that one paragraph always produces one list entry. Paragraph boundaries and display settings can affect the representation. Your reference is the affected wording and the edit type. If you cannot connect a mark to the intended inserted or deleted sentence, stop without guessing.

Accept only the selected inserted paragraph

Open Edit > Track Changes > Manage and select the List tab. The official List help explains that selecting an entry highlights the corresponding change in the document. Use that relationship to identify the edit. Its row position, colour or apparent timestamp alone is not a sufficient reason to accept it.

Find the insertion associated with Practice extra: paper bag. Select the entry and inspect the highlighted text. It must refer to that sentence, not to the deleted note or one of the unchanged controls. If nested or ambiguous entries prevent a clear identification, leave the decision unresolved rather than applying a bulk action.

Choose Accept for that selected insertion only. The intended content result is that the paper-bag paragraph stays in the document. Do not choose Accept All. A blanket acceptance could also retain the deletion that this exercise specifically asks you to reject, producing a superficially tidy but incorrect final wording.

After a decision, do not reuse the previous row position as the identity of the next change. LibreOffice's List documentation describes entries being reordered by accepted or rejected status. Find the affected wording again. The documentation does not justify promising that every decided entry disappears or that an empty list proves complete review.

Reject the selected deletion and restore its wording

Locate the deletion associated with Practice note: keep this line. Select it and confirm the corresponding affected text in the document. You are deciding not to retain the removal of that original paragraph. That is different from rejecting the newly inserted paper-bag sentence, which you intend to keep.

Choose Reject for the correctly identified deletion only. The expected content result is the restoration of the original note paragraph. Do not choose Reject All: that is a bulk decision rather than rejection of the one deletion you have identified. Both decisions must be tied to their own affected text.

Check the literal wording against the table below. A visible inserted paragraph without the restored note does not satisfy both requirements. Likewise, a restored note with the extra paragraph missing is incomplete. The exercise has a content answer key, not a required count of interface marks or a universal colour pattern.

Check four paragraphs without making a global completion claim

If necessary, close the Manage view without applying additional accept or reject actions to return to the text. Read every expected sentence individually. Confirm that the item and pickup controls are unchanged, the note has returned and the extra paragraph remains. Looking only at the bottom of the page cannot verify all four conditions.

The global pending-change state still remains UNKNOWN. This walkthrough does not supply a filter-reset or unfiltered-list procedure. Do not infer that every edit has been reviewed from a filtered or empty-looking list. Even if your four paragraphs match, stop before calling the whole document approved, finished or ready to share.

If you actually need to find differences between two existing files, the Word two-version comparison walkthrough addresses that separate job. Here you deliberately record edits in one document and decide on selected entries. The version approval reference exercise asks another question: which supplied wording an approval record refers to.

Resolving a discussion thread is not the same operation either. The resolved-comment walkthrough concerns the discussion state, not acceptance of an insertion. A filename extension check can help identify an existing file later, but does not save this unsaved document or prove a review state. Keep those outputs separate.

Stop when the affected text or scope is uncertain

A reviewer name or recorded timestamp is not proof of the true author, business authority or legal approval of the wording. This is not a signature workflow. Similarly, the document citation check concerns whether a source supports a claim. Retaining a sentence during editing does not make its factual contents correct.

Stop if recording was not enabled before the edits, the selected entry cannot be matched to the intended sentence, the expected wording differs or the required command is unavailable. Do not remove protection, change identity, sign into another account or install software to continue. Ambiguous markers are a stop condition, not a reason to accept or reject everything.

Your narrow final statement can describe the selected insertion, the selected deletion and the four paragraphs you observed. It cannot claim zero pending edits, global approval, persistence or permission to distribute. Nothing is saved, shared, exported or sent in this exercise. Preserving that distinction is part of completing the task honestly rather than merely making the page look clean.

• Affected text ambiguous: STOP
• Four sentences do not match: STOP
• Global pending state: UNKNOWN
• Saving and sharing: outside this exercise