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Get a Word File with Tracked Changes

When you ask Claude or ChatGPT to compare two drafts you get a description in the chat. Here is how to get a Word document with tracked changes showing every difference.

Overview

When you give Claude or ChatGPT two drafts and ask what changed, the answer arrives as text in the conversation: a list of the differences the assistant noticed. It is not a document you can open in Word, accept and reject changes in, or send to a client.

To get a Word document with tracked changes, the comparison has to be run by a comparison engine. Version Story is one, and it connects to both Claude and ChatGPT. Once it is connected, the assistant passes your two drafts to Version Story and returns the finished Word file.

What you get

  • A .docx file in which every difference between the two drafts is a tracked change: insertions, deletions, and moved text.
  • The formatting of the original: numbering, tables, footnotes, and cross-references are kept.
  • Tracked changes you can review in Word in the usual way, accepting or rejecting each one.

Steps

  1. Connect Version Story to your assistant, if you have not already:

    • Claude: the plugin for the desktop app, Cowork, and Claude Code, or the connector for Claude in a browser.
    • ChatGPT: the Version Story plugin from ChatGPT's plugin directory. See the ChatGPT installation guide.

  2. Start a new conversation and attach the two drafts. In ChatGPT, choose Version Story Redline Compare from the Plugins menu below the message box.

  3. Ask for the Word file by name:

    Compare these two drafts with Version Story and give me the Word document with tracked changes. The first file is the draft I sent.

  4. Download the Word file the assistant returns and open it in Word.

If you do not name a format, you get a PDF redline. Ask for "the Word redline" or "tracked changes" to get the .docx.

Why not ask the assistant to write the tracked changes itself?

An assistant can edit a single document and mark its own edits as tracked changes. Comparing two complete versions is a different job: every difference has to be found, and a difference that is missed does not appear in the result at all. A comparison engine works through both documents in full, which is why its output can be relied on as a record of what changed.