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a) Make a copy of the document for the client.
b) Accept all the changes to the document. (Track changes, accept all
changes)
c) Save as document with another name. (preferably with Fast Save option
turned off).
Now, you have a document for the client where the tracked changes are not
there. Saving the document with Save as and (having the Fast Save option
turned off) ensures that you are providing a clean copy to the client.
You could use the Version feature too, where the first version is with
changes and the second one is without changes. But I would not recommend
it. Simpler to have two copies.
The other elements which you may not want the client to see are: comments,
hidden text and meta data. You need to remove these from the client's copy
of the document. Meta data is the stuff you write in the Properties (File
menu) dialog box (name of author, comments, summary, etc)
As you are aware Protect Document (Track Changes) will not help. (This
protects earlier revision marks to be protected.) Similarly, protecting the
document from opening/modification and making it Read only will not help.
(These do not affect the track changes option.)
I am a fan of both Word and PDF. I would leave the choice entirely to you
and your company. But in this case, Word is sufficient.
Hope this helps. Best wishes.
Guru (guru -at- bom5 -dot- vsnl -dot- net -dot- in)