Pop-up Comments

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 29, 2020)
This tip applies to Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003

If you work with Comments in your documents, you may really like this tip. Did you know that Word can automatically display a comment when you position the mouse over the comment marker in your document? For instance, if there is a comment marker such as [ALW1] in your document, and you position the mouse pointer over that marker, a small pop-up window appears and displays the contents of the comment.

If your version of Word does not do this, simply follow these steps to turn on the feature:

Choose Options from the Tools menu. Word displays the Options dialog box.
Make sure the View tab is selected. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The View tab of the Options dialog box

Make sure the ScreenTips check box is selected.
Click on OK.

Why Word refers to the pop-up comments as "ScreenTips" is beyond me. Normally, ScreenTips are a different feature, as described in the following tip.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (644) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Inserting the Total Number of Pages in Your Document

Word keeps track of many statistics for each of your documents. One statistic is the total number of pages in the printed ...

Discover More

Setting Vertical Alignment

Excel allows you to adjust not only the horizontal alignment of values in a cell, but also the vertical alignment. This ...

Discover More

Storing Building Block Entries with a Document

Building Blocks can provide quite a bit of flexibility and power in a document. If you want to share Building Blocks with ...

Discover More

Do More in Less Time! An easy-to-understand guide to the more advanced features available in the Microsoft 365 version of Word. Enhance the quality of your documents and boost productivity in any field with this in-depth resource. Complete your Word-related tasks more efficiently as you unlock lesser-known tools and learn to quickly access the features you need. Check out Microsoft 365 Word For Professionals For Dummies today!

More WordTips (menu)

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 ...

Discover More

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 ...

Discover More

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 ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is 4 - 2?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the menu interface (Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2002, or Word 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.