Comments are a useful tool when editing in Word, especially if more than one person is working on a document. There are several settings you will want to adjust to make Comments work well for you. The following articles discuss how to edit and view comments in Word to achieve communication concerning specific pieces of a document.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Comments and Annotations' topic. Click the article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

   Adding Comments to Your Document
If you would like to add non-printing notes to your document, the Comments feature is one way of doing that. Here's how to add them easily.

   Allowing Only Comments in a Document
Develop a document that is to be reviewed by a group of people, and you may want to protect it in some way. One way you can protect it is to make sure that people can only add comments to the document and not make changes to the text. Here's how to do this trick.

   Changing the Language of Comment Boxes
In most instances Word makes it relatively easy to change the language associated with your document text. This is important when it comes to applying certain tools, such as the spell checker and grammar checker. Even so, it is not always evident where the language changes should be made. A case in point is in comment boxes, as discussed in this tip.

   Changing the User Name in Existing Comments
Want to change the name that Word associates with various comments previously added to your document? Here are some ideas you can apply.

   Comment Dates Updated Inappropriately
Using the comment capabilities of Word is a common occurrence when developing a document. What do you do, however, if the dates associated with the comments periodically change?

   Comments in Endnotes
Able to add comments everywhere, except in endnotes? This seems to be a limitation in Word, but here are some ways to work around the problem.

   Comments in Headers and Footers
Comments can be a necessity when developing documents in conjunction with other people. They can be used to help document choices or to mark areas that need attention. You may find it odd, then, that Word doesn't allow you to add comments to headers or footers in the document. Here's a way around this shortcoming.

   Comments in Text Boxes
If you use text boxes in your documents, you may sometime want to place a comment in the text box, the same as you can do with text not in the text box. Word doesn't allow you to add comments to text boxes, but there are a couple of workarounds you can use to get the same result.

   Comments Use Tiny Font when Printed
When you print out your documents, do any comments in the document appear very tiny on the printout? It could be because of the way you have those comments formatted. This tip explains the ins and outs of comment formatting and how it affects printouts.

   Converting Paragraphs to Comments
Want to pull text from a bunch of paragraphs and stuff that text into comments? It's easy to do using the macro presented in this tip.

   Copying, Moving, and Deleting Comments
Comments are often added to documents to aid in their development. You can use regular editing techniques to copy, move, and delete those comments.

   Deleting All Comments
Got comments in your document? Want to get rid of them all? The easiest way to do so is going to depend on the complexity of the document you are editing.

   Formatting Comments
Need to change the appearance of the text in your comments? It's easy to do using techniques you are already familiar with.

   Getting Rid of "Comment" in Comments
When you add a comment to a document, Word presents that comment in a very specific way. If you want to change the way in which the comment is displayed, you are, unfortunately, out of luck.

   Jumping To a Comment
Got a document with lots of comments in it? You can navigate from comment to comment with ease by using the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.

   Making Sure Changes and Comments are Anonymous
When using Track Changes, Word normally notes the originator of a particular comment or change. This information can then be displayed so that other readers can know who did what. If you want comments and changes to be anonymous, then there are a couple of things you can do, as described in this tip.

   Pasting a Comment into Your Document
When developing a document, you may end up with all sorts of comments that you need to deal with. One common task is to copy text from the comment into the body of the document. Here's how to accomplish the task.

   Pop-up Comments
Want to see what a comment says just by moving the mouse? Here's how.

   Printing Comments
After adding comments to a document you may want to print them later. Word provides a variety of ways you can print the comments.

   Printing Comments from a Macro
Need to print the comments you've added to a document? You can do it manually or you can have your macro do the printing. This tip examines how to make the macro do the work.

   Removing All Comments
Need to get rid of all the comments in your document? You can do so by using the regular Find and Replace feature of Word.

   Searching for Comment Marks
Got a bunch of comments in your document? You can easily jump from one comment to the other by using the Object Browser, as described in this tip.

   Turning Off Comment Color when Printing
Comments that you add to your document are most often displayed in a bright color so they aren't easily missed. If you want to turn off those colors when printing the comments, you'll want to note the information in this tip.

   Using Multiple References to a Single Comment
Find yourself repeating the same comment over and over? Here's a couple of ways you can save some typing by simply referring to the first instance of the comment you repeat.

   Viewing Comments
Adding comments to a document is a normal activity when writing and editing. Once comments have been added, you may wonder about the best way to view those comments. Here are the various ways you can display them.

   Viewing Comments From a Specific Reviewer
If you have multiple editors (or authors) working on the same document, and each of them is adding comments, you may want to view only the comments made by a subset of those editors. This can be easily done, but the steps you follow depend on the version of Word you are using.