How do I combine comments from several beta readers in Word?

Combining two copies

Word's desktop app has a command built for this. It merges the comments and tracked changes of two files into a third, marking each with the name of whoever made it. Keep your own copy unchanged. Save the readers' files beside it before you start.

1. Open Word and go to Review › Compare › Combine.
2. Under Original document, pick the copy you sent out. Under Revised document, pick the first reader's.
3. If a reader typed straight into the text with Track Changes off, fill in Label unmarked changes with so those edits carry their name.
4. Press More and, under Show changes in, choose New document. Neither reader's file is altered that way.
5. Press OK, then save the result under a new name.

If both files contain formatting changes, Word asks which file's formatting changes to keep, because the combined document can store only one set. Pick whichever file still carries your own formatting, which is usually the combined file or your original. Readers who restyled a heading will lose that choice. Their words and notes survive.

A third reader, and more

Combine takes exactly two documents. For the second reader, run it again with the combined file as the original and that reader's copy as the revised one, and repeat for every reader after that. Save each round under a new name, so a mistake in round four doesn't cost rounds one through three.

Once everyone is in, the Reviewing Pane lists every comment and change with its author, and the Show Markup menu can narrow the view to one reader at a time. Word for Mac has the same command, labeled Review › Compare › Combine Documents. Microsoft's instructions cover only the desktop apps, so do not expect to find it in Word on the web.

Combining works best when every reader started from the same version. A reader handed an older draft produces a flood of changes that are really your own later revisions.

In Tabularia

There is no combining step. The reviews never land in one file. Each reader you invite as an Editor submits a review that comes back as its own draft beneath the one you shared, with that reader's comments sitting on the passages they were written about. You settle each review a difference at a time or all at once, in the manuscript, and the change card says who wrote each proposal.

If your readers have already worked in Word, their comments can still come across. Importing a DOCX brings in comments whose anchors are unambiguous, as plain notes without the reader's account behind them. Tracked changes do not come in as changes to review: inserted text arrives accepted and text marked for deletion is left out. An import also makes a new project rather than folding into the one you have, so it suits a combined file you mean to carry forward, not a stack of reviews still to weigh. Going the other way, a DOCX export is clean unless you check Keep Review Changes and comments as tracked changes; then each pending Review Change goes out as a Word tracked change and each Review Comment as a Word comment.