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Word has devised a clever way to allow you to insert comments or notes into a document. The Comment command works like a combination of the old blue pencil from copy editing days of yore and the modern sticky note. This command enables you to insert notes, suggestions, ideas, or advice into a document without botching up the whole thing.
Adding comments
To insert a comment into your document, follow these steps:
1. Select the chunk of text you want to comment on.
Be specific; although you may be tempted to select the entire document, just the first few words of a longer chunk are all that's necessary.
2. Click the Review tab.
3. Click the New Comment button from the Comments group.
Immediately, the document shrinks a tad to make room for the markup area, on the right. Your selected text is hugged by red parentheses and highlighted in pink. Off to the right, in the markup area, appears a comment bubble, inside of which is the comment number and your initials.
4. Type your comment.
The bubble expands to contain all your comment text. Comments can be endless, although short and to the point works best. Figure 1 illustrates several comments in a document.
Figure 1: Several comments are noted in this text passage.
5. Continue reading or reviewing the document.
The comments and the markup area stay visible until you hide them.
 | Comments are best made in Print Layout view, as just described, but it's possible to add comments in Full Screen Reading view by using the Insert Comment button. |
In Draft view, comments appear highlighted and numbered in the text; to see the actual comments, however, you must show the Reviewing pane. Click the Reviewing Pane button to see the comments; click the button again to hide them. Keep in mind:
- Comments are labeled with your initials and a number.
- Comment numbers are sequential, starting with 1 for the first comment in a document.
- When new comments are inserted, the numbering changes so that the comments are always sequential.
- When someone else reviews your document and makes comments, their initials are used. Furthermore, their comments appear in a different color.
- You can edit the comments the same as you edit any text in Word.
- Comment text has its own style: Comment Text.
 | - The initials you see next to the comment are supposed to be your initials, which you entered when Word was first configured. To change the initials, choose Word Options from the Office Button menu to display the Word Options dialog box. Choose the Popular category on the left side of the window. On the right side, near the bottom, enter your user name and initials. Click OK.
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Hiding comments
There are various ways to hide comments that are made in your document. To get rid of the markup area (to the right of your document, where the comments dwell), choose Balloons --> Show All Revisions Inline. Highlighted text still appears in the document; you can point at the text with the mouse to see a pop-up bubble with the comment. But at least the markup area is gone. To restore the markup area, choose Balloons --> Show Revisions in Balloons.
When you want to hide the markup area as well as all the comments, choose Show Markup --> Comments to remove the check mark next to the Comments option. To restore the markup area and comments in your text, choose Show Markup --> Comments to restore the check mark.
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