View comment in word

We’ve rolled out a new, more modern comments experience in Word with an improved @mention experience and keyboard shortcuts. These improvements set the stage for richer collaboration by your team, unify how comments work across Word endpoints—as well as Excel and PowerPoint—for a consistent, coherent experience.  

Let’s look at what’s new. 

A consistent experience 

With modern comments in Word, we’re aligning how comments work across Office on different endpoints, so that you and your team can rely on a consistent experience regardless of whether you’re using Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on Windows, MacOS, or the web.  

Stay in control 

With this update, you no longer have to worry about your comments being seen by others before you’re finished editing them. After you draft a new comment or reply, click the Post comment or Post reply button or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter (Windows) or Cmd + Enter (MacOS) to share your thoughts with others. 

Choose how you view comments 

In Word you’ll find comments to the right of your page, by default. In this view, contextual comments are side-by-side with the page content, to help you focus on the feedback that’s most relevant to the part of the document you’re working on. To help you focus on what’s active, when you resolve comments they’ll be moved out of your way to the Comments pane.  

In the Comments pane, you can see a single list of all comments in your document, including resolved comments.  

To switch between the contextual view and the Comments pane, simply click the Comments button in the upper right corner of your Word window. 

Resolve comment threads 

Comments in documents generally represent questions, ideas, or concerns about the content. When those have been addressed, comments allow you to mark that thread as resolved. Resolved comment threads won’t appear in the margin (though you can still find them in the Comments pane) to help you stay focused on what’s active. 

Improved @mentions in comments 

This feature is only available to enterprise customers for files that are in the cloud. 

After you’ve started your new comment or reply, you can use the @mention feature to call out to one or more of your colleagues in your organization or school. Simply type the @ symbol followed by their name or email alias.  

Tip: The email alias is that part of the email address before the @ sign.  For example: «alexw» is the email alias for alexw@contoso.com.  

When you post your comment, anybody that you’ve @mentioned in it will get an email notification. Whoever started the comment thread will also be notified. Notification emails let your collaborators know there’s been new activity in the comment thread, gives them a preview of the document content where the comment was made, as well as the comment you left. They can reply to your comment from the email, or they can click a link in the notification email to open the document and go straight to the comment you left, if they want to see more context. 

Assign tasks with @mentions

This feature is only available to enterprise customers in Word for the web. 

An @mention is also important for assigning tasks to your collaborators. When you @mention someone, you have the option to assign the comment to them as a task. As with a normal @mention, the person you assign the task to will get an email notification. When the person assigned a task has completed the task, they can resolve it.

Increased confidence by design 

A comment or reply can only be edited by the person who created it. 

Improved accessibility 

With this update we’ve also improved the accessibility of comments by adding more ways to navigate and read comments using your keyboard and screen reader. 

And more! 

We’re just getting started with improving your comments experience. Stay tuned for more new and exciting comments and collaboration features to help you and your team be more productive in Word and Office. 

Why don’t I see it? 

Modern Comments are available only if you’re using Word for Microsoft 365. If you’re using an older version of Office, you’ll still see comments from other users, but in the classic Comments experience. 

See also 

Using Modern Comments in Word

You’re working on a Microsoft Word Document and can’t figure out how to see all of the comments at the same time.

This article will show you how to view all of the comments in your Word doc at the click of a button.

How to show all comment lines in your Word Document

Follow these 4 easy steps to view all comments:

1. Open the Word document.
2. In the toolbar, click Review.
3. Find and click Tracking.
4. Tick All Markups.

Only want to see the comments not all changes?

If your Microsoft Word Document is full of tracked changes, comments and formatting updates and you want to clear the air for comments only here’s how you do it:

1. Open the Word document.
2. In the toolbar, click Review.
3. Find and click Tracking.
4. Click Mark-up Options.
5. Clear everything except Comments.

Need a better way to collaborate on Microsoft Word Documents?

You’re working on a word document with your team, each of you adding comments and tracking changes along the way. Then you realise two people have been working on the same document at once and you no longer have all of the changes in the one file.

You start googling ‘How to merge Word documents with comments?’ and think there has to be a better way!

Enter purpose-built tools, such as Simul Docs, designed to help you seamlessly collaborate on Microsoft Word documents with your team.

Simul Docs is an easy to use tool that works to keep track of a Word document as your team make edits. Automatically saving new versions each time the document is opened and edited, tracking all changes (even if you forget to turn track changes on).

Simul also recognises when two people are editing a document at the same time, saving each person’s changes in a separate ‘branch’ so no one’s work is overridden.

You can then ‘merge’ these two branches with the click of a button. Bringing both author’s changes back into the same document, allowing you to easily identify the differences. It’s that easy!

Show or Hide Comments in Microsoft Word Documents

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated January 10, 2021

Applies to: Microsoft^® Word^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 or 365 (Windows)

You can show and hide comments using the Review tab in the Ribbon in Microsoft Word. If you add comments in a Word document, they will appear in a markup area on the right side of pages by default. If you want to show or hide comments, you’ll need to control the display of markup. Keep in mind that comments that are hidden could be displayed by a colleague or client.

The markup area appears in Print Layout View (the default view in Word) whenever a document includes comments and its appearance can be controlled using settings on the Review tab in the Ribbon. The default markup is set to Simple Markup with comments displayed. If the markup area is not appearing on the right, click Show Comments in the Comments group. Tracked changes also appear in the markup area.

In this article, we’re assuming that the default markup options are being used (although you can change the display of markup using Track Changes Options).

Recommended article: How to Remove Comments in Word (3+ Ways to Delete Comments)

Do you want to learn more about Microsoft Word? Check out our virtual classroom or live classroom Word courses >

Hide comments using Display for Review

To hide comments in the markup area using Display for Review:

1. Click the Review tab in the Ribbon.
2. In the Tracking group, click Display for Review. A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select No Markup or Original to hide the markup area, including comments.

The following drop-down menu appears when you click Display for Review:

When you click Display for Review, you have the following options:

• Simple Markup which displays the markup area with comments and revisions. If you select Simple Markup and then click Show Comments in the Comments group, the markup area appears or disappears (if there are no tracked changes). If no markup area appears on the right, comments appear as speech bubbles that you can click to display the comment.
• All Markup which displays the markup area with all comments or revisions as well as lines to their locations in the text.
• No Markup which hides the markup area so that comments and revisions are hidden.
• Original which hides the markup area as well as any revisions made to the document. In regard to comments, this option is the same as No Markup.

In the following example, Simple Markup is selected as well as Show Comments in the Comments group (Print Layout View in Word 365):

In the next example, Simple Markup is selected and Show Comments is not selected  in the Comments group (Print Layout View in Word 365):

Comments appear in different ways depending on the selected view. Typically, you would change views using the View tab in the Ribbon. If you select Draft View, comments appear as the initials of the reviewer with square brackets and are highlighted with a background color. You can position the mouse pointer on the text to view the comment in a pop-up bubble. In Read Mode View, comments appear as speech bubbles to the right of the text. Simply click a bubble to view a comment.

Hide comments using Show Markup

To hide comments using Show Markup:

1. Click the Review tab in the Ribbon.
2. In the Tracking group, click Show Markup. A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select Comments to deselect comments.

The Show Markup drop-down menu includes the following options:

Show comments in the markup area

To show comments in the markup area:

1. Click the Review tab in the Ribbon.
2. In the Tracking group, click Display for Review. A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select Simple Markup or All Markup to show the markup area, including comments.
4. Click Show Markup. A drop-down menu appears.
5. Ensure Comments is selected.
6. If you selected Simple Markup, in the Comments group, select Show Comments in the Comments group.

View all comments using the Reviewing Pane

To view all comments regardless of view:

1. Click the Review tab in the Ribbon.
2. In the Tracking group, click Reviewing Pane. A drop-down menu appears.
3. Select either the horizontal or vertical display. The Reviewing Pane  appears and will displays comments and revisions.

You can click the Reviewing Pane button again in the Ribbon to hide the Reviewing Pane.

Hiding markup is not the same as accepting changes or deleting comments. You should accept or reject changes and delete comments in your Word document before you send out the final version.

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When you are adding a comment, Word allows you to enter the comment in the balloon area at the right side of the document. Most users, when they are through entering the comment text, hide the comments balloons so they will be able to see more of their document at once. (You hide the comment balloons by clicking the Show Comments tool on the Review tab of the ribbon.)

If you later want to view your comments, Word provides two ways that they can be displayed: either in the Reviewing Pane or in balloons to the right side of your document. The latter method (using balloons) is the default comment-viewing method; there’s nothing you need to do to turn it on. If the balloons aren’t displayed, however, you can display them by clicking the Show Comments tool on the Review tab of the ribbon. (Note that the Show Comments tool will be greyed out if All Markup is selected in the Tracking group.) You can change any of the comments by clicking within a balloon and making your changes. Then, click some other area of your document outside the balloon.

If you prefer to display the Reviewing Pane, follow these steps:

1. Make sure the Review tab of the ribbon is displayed.
2. In the Tracking group you see the Reviewing Pane tool. Click the down-arrow at the right of the tool. You should see two options displayed.
3. Choose either Reviewing Pane Vertical or Reviewing Pane Horizontal, according to your desires. The Reviewing Pane should appear as indicated by your choice.

Make any changes to your comments in the Reviewing Pane, as desired. When you are done making changes, you can close the Reviewing Pane by again clicking on the Reviewing Pane tool.

Author Bio

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…