Handling comments in Word

Judging by the files I receive to edit, authors sometimes struggle a bit with the comments function in Word.

This is the fourth and final part of my mini-series on working with tracked changes as an author. I’ve previously written about why I don’t recommend tracking each and every change, knowing which buttons to press as you try to navigate the changes that are tracked and how to work with a file when it comes back to you to accept or reject a gazillion tracked changes.

This time, to round things off, I’m going to take a look at comments – those conversations going on around the edge of the page.

Navigating the Comments tools

Let’s start with where the tools are. I’m working in Word 365 on a Windows 10 PC so my screenshots may look different from your set-up. If they do, YouTube and Microsoft have plenty of help and demonstrations – just search via your favourite browser. I also don’t have Modern Comments switched on. But check out this Microsoft page if you do.

As for the other tracked changes buttons we’ve looked at in the series so far, head over to the Review tab. To the left of the Tracking block that we’ve worked with before is the Comments block (Figure 1):

That looks pretty self-explanatory by now, I hope, but we’ll get to the detail in a moment. We’ll also need to use the Show Markup button on the neighbouring Tracking block (Figure 2):

Finding and reading comments

When you have a file to review that contains comments, you need to be able to find and read them. You could just scroll up and down looking for them, hoping you find them all, but there are more effective ways of moving around.

In Figure 1 we can see there are Previous and Next buttons. These do exactly what you’d expect – they take you to the next comment, or back to the previous one, one by one.

But what if you’ve decided to scroll and you can’t find the comments bubbles with the actual comments in them? If you’re seeing little cartoon speech bubbles as in Figure 3, then either click on the Show Comments button (on the right-hand side of Figure 2), or click on the little cartoon bubble itself and the comment will appear in full (Figure 4).

Clicking on Show Comments will fix all of the comments at once and show them (usually on the right-hand side of the page), whereas clicking on the cartoon bubble will only open that one.

Creating order out of tracked chaos

If you’ve read the other articles in this series, you know I’m no fan of having All Markup switched on. Just for fun, can you find the comment that needs attention in Figure 5?

Even if you found it OK (clue: it starts AQ for ‘author query’), then you still may not realise that all the formatting and other tracked changes have forced the query to seem to appear against the previous item in the references list. Clicking in the comment, though, will highlight the text the comment is attached to – so do that on crowded pages.

Still – do yourself a favour and don’t work like this!

Take a look back at Figure 2 and find the button that will show ‘All Markup’; use the little down arrow on the right to change it to ‘Simple Markup’ and to your relief that same part of the text will now look like Figure 6. That’s so much easier to deal with, isn’t it? And you can be much more confident you won’t miss a comment you need to tackle.

Filtering by reviewer

If there have been multiple reviewers, you can filter to show just the comments from whoever you choose. I’ll show you how, but bear in mind it can then be easy to overlook somebody, especially if there are a lot of people who have left comments.

Head back to the Tracking block (see Figure 2) and click on the little down arrow on the right of Show Markup. Then click on Specific People and a box with All Reviewers and the names of those people who have left corrections or comments (Figure 7). Click on the names you want. (The box will keep closing and you’ll have to keep reopening it to pick each additional person, but it’s worth the effort!)

Before you decide you’ve finished with the file, test yourself by turning ‘All Reviewers’ back on if you’d been doing a lot of filtering and there are multiple reviewers. Just to be on the safe side, be sure you’ve not skipped someone whilst filtering.

Replying to comments

Each comment has two buttons in it – Reply and Resolve. Reply does exactly what you’d expect – it allows you to type in your response to the question – great for communicating with your editor, or with other reviewers. Resolve greys out the comment to show people that issue has been dealt with, and resolved comments can be reopened but, unless you really need to leave a history of comments in a document, it’s cleaner to delete.

Deleting comments

Delete all the comments you safely can, to make the file manageable. Some files I’ve seen have thumping great strings of comments and, frankly, they’re no longer helpful. Someone says ‘The date of that reference is 2018, not 2019’. The date is fixed. A reply is added to the comment to say that. Why? Resolve the comment if you simply must leave a trail. But otherwise, simply delete that comment. It’s served its purpose.

To delete the comment, you have two options. You can right click in the comment and choose Delete Comment. Alternatively, once you’ve clicked into the comment you want to get rid of, click on Delete in the Comments block (second button from the left in Figure 1). Until you do click into a comment, the Delete button will be greyed out.

As you can see in Figure 8, if you click on the little down arrow underneath the Delete button, you have options – similar to the ones we saw for accepting and rejecting changes in bulk. If you want to read up on that, check out the ‘Turbocharging accepting and rejecting changes’ section in the second article in this series.

When you have used the filtering to show only the comments from a particular reviewer, or group of reviewers, the Delete All Comment Show option is available to you and it will do exactly that. Delete All Comments in the Document can save you from working through every comment and deleting it individually – great if you’ve resolved everything and you’re ready for a clean document.

Undo is your friend if you hurriedly change your mind (Ctrl-Z on a PC), or make a copy of the document before you make any large-scale changes, so you have a recovery position should you need it.

Replacing comments

If your document has long strings of comments but the point isn’t entirely resolved, you can clean things up and make the file easier to handle by adding a new comment that summarises the conversation, then deleting the really long string. To delete a string of comments hanging off the original comment, delete the original comment to make the whole thing disappear.

The next people to work on that document will find it easier to understand the problem with that portion of the text, and will be grateful not to have the file clogged up with extraneous stuff.

Changing the name that appears in comments you make

If you need to change your name, perhaps because you’re reviewing something anonymously, or maybe you’ve borrowed someone’s laptop to get this bit of work done, it’s possible.

At the top left corner of the ribbon, click on File, then click, right down at the bottom of the menu that opens, on Options. The Options box has a huge number of settings, but the ones we want are on the General tab, which is where the box should open (Figure 9).

Halfway down that view are the Personalize Your Copy of Microsoft Office settings. You can see that I’ve changed my name to Jack Robinson, initials JR. To get this to work and appear as your name as you edit and comment, you do need to make sure you’ve ticked the box underneath: ‘Always use the values regardless of sign in to Office’. And do remember to change them back when you’re done – especially if you’re on a borrowed computer!

Note that this won’t change the ID on any comments or tracked editing you’ve already done, but new comments and tracking will bear the new name.

In summary

Over the course of this four-part mini-series, I’ve explained why tracking every last keystroke is a mistake, then walked you through the basics of working with tracked changes as an author or reviewer. It’s been very quick and sketchy, but there are plenty of detailed tutorials available on the Microsoft website.

I hope that this helps you work with tracked changes files without headaches nor meltdowns, and that you’ll be able to deal with your editor’s queries and edits whilst feeling in control of what you’re doing, and confident about moving around the file.