Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Managing Comments.
Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 7, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016
Besides simply adding and viewing comments one at a time, Excel includes some tools that allow you to easily manage your comments. The tools used to manage comments are found on the Review tab of the ribbon. If you have quite a few comments in your worksheet, these tools can be a great help.
The buttons on the Review tab of the ribbon make it very easy to work with the comments. For instance, you can add a comment to a cell by clicking your mouse on the New Comment tool.
Perhaps the most helpful tools are the Previous Comment and Next Comment tools. These allow you to work strictly with comments and jump from one to the other. As you click your mouse on one of these tools, Excel highlights a comment. The New Comment tool changes to Edit Comment, and you can use the Hide Comment tool to dismiss the comment and the Delete Comment tool to permanently remove it.
When you are done working with comments, just click somewhere else in your document and change to a different ribbon tab as necessary.
ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (11912) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Managing Comments.
Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!
In Excel, single comments are associated with single cells. If you want to have a comment be linked to multiple cells, ...
Discover MoreThere are three different ways that Excel allows you to display any comments that are in your worksheet. Here's how you ...
Discover MoreOne of the pieces of information that Excel can maintain relative to a workbook is a set of comments of your choice. ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2018-08-11 11:19:49
J. Woolley
You might be interested in these macros for managing comments:
http://www.contextures.com/excelcommentmacros.html
Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Please Note:
This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here:
Comments