Changing the Comment Indicator Color

Francois wonders if it is possible to change the color of the triangle that appears in the upper-right corner of a cell when there is a comment associated with the cell. The triangle is red, by default, but Francois would like it to be a different color that is easier for him to see.

There are some things that, it seems, are simply hard-coded into Excel and cannot be changed. The color of the comment indicator is one of those items. Even playing with the various color settings in Windows had no effect on the indicators.

Note that in newer versions of Excel the terminology has changed. What used to be called a comment is now referred to as a note, and Excel uses the term comment for the newer, threaded comments. The indicator for a note is still the familiar red triangle, and the indicator for a threaded comment is different; neither indicator color can be changed through normal settings.

This has been an issue that has been asked about and discussed for years in the Excel community. One potential workaround is presented by MVP Debra Dagliesh at this page:

https://www.contextures.com/xlcomments03.html#Indicator

The solution presented there was actually designed for printing. (Excel doesn't print indicators when you print a worksheet, but you may want them printed.) The macro that Debra presents can be easily modified so that the graphic used is any color desired.

Of course, the drawback to such an approach is that it adds a graphic to your worksheet for each comment you have. If you have lots of comments in the worksheet, you'll end up having lots of graphics. In addition, the graphics may not "stay put" as you edit the worksheet, adding and deleting cells. If you add or delete comments, then you'll also need to delete graphics (Debra provides a macro to do this) and rerun the macro to add graphics back.

Another potential option is to use a macro to color the background of any cell that contains a comment. The following macro looks at whatever cells you have selected and then changes the color of any cell containing a comment.

Sub ColorComments()
    Dim c As Range

    On Error GoTo ErrorHandler 'Deal with empty selection
    Selection.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeComments).Select
    On Error GoTo 0

    For Each c In Selection.Cells
        If (Not c.Comment Is Nothing)
          Or (Not c.CommentThreaded Is Nothing) Then
            c.Interior.ColorIndex = 36
        End If
    Next c

    Range("A1").Select
    Exit Sub
ErrorHandler:
   ' Error Handler is deliberately empty
End Sub

The drawback to this macro is that it is not easy to "unmark" any cells if notes or comments are removed. You'll also need to rerun the macro as you add new notes or comments to your worksheet.

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