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.

Managing Comments

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 7, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016


1

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.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

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. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Searching for Floating Graphics

Graphics can be added to a document so that they are either inline with the text or floating over the text. You can use ...

Discover More

Calculating the Distance between the Top of the Window and Row 1

Normally Excel positions a UserForm in the center of your screen. You may want to position the form elsewhere, more ...

Discover More

Capitalizing the Word "I"

The first-person, singular pronoun "I" should always be capitalized, unless you are exercising poetic license. Word may ...

Discover More

Professional Development Guidance! Four world-class developers offer start-to-finish guidance for building powerful, robust, and secure applications with Excel. The authors show how to consistently make the right design decisions and make the most of Excel's powerful features. Check out Professional Excel Development today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Changing the Background Color for a Comment

Comments are a great way to document your worksheets. Excel provides you the tools you need in order to format your ...

Discover More

Linking Comments to Multiple Cells

In Excel, single comments are associated with single cells. If you want to have a comment be linked to multiple cells, ...

Discover More

Printing Formatted Comments

When you print your worksheet, you may want Excel to include your comments or notes as they appear on the screen. Here's ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 8 - 5?

2018-08-11 11:19:49

J. Woolley

You might be interested in these macros for managing comments:
http://www.contextures.com/excelcommentmacros.html


This Site

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.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.