Thesis & Long Documents
How to Track Changes in LaTeX Like Word's Review Mode
Reviewers and advisors often want to see what changed between revisions. LaTeX can show tracked changes with colored additions, deletions, and margin notes — just like Word's Track Changes.
Using latexdiff (Automatic)
latexdiff compares two .tex files and generates a new file highlighting all changes:
# Compare old and new versions:
latexdiff old-draft.tex new-draft.tex > diff.tex
# Compile the diff file:
pdflatex diff.tex
# Result: additions in blue/underlined, deletions in red/strikethrough
# For multi-file projects:
latexdiff-vc --git -r HEAD~1 main.tex # Compare with previous Git commitUsing the changes Package (Manual)
For fine-grained control, mark changes manually with the changes package:
\usepackage{changes}
% Define authors:
\definechangesauthor[name={Reviewer 1}, color=blue]{R1}
\definechangesauthor[name={Author}, color=red]{AU}
\begin{document}
The experiment \deleted[id=R1]{tested}
\added[id=R1]{evaluated} the hypothesis.
\replaced[id=AU]{We found significant results.}{The results were inconclusive.}
% Add a comment:
\comment[id=R1]{Please clarify the sample size here.}
% Print summary of changes:
\listofchanges
\end{document}💡 Tips
- •latexdiff works best when changes are not too extensive — very large rewrites can confuse it
- •Use 'changes' package with \listofchanges to generate a summary for your advisor
- •Set \usepackage[final]{changes} to hide all markup in the final version
- •Git + latexdiff-vc is the most powerful combination for revision tracking
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