Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 10, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016
Grant has a cell in a worksheet that when someone starts typing in the cell, he would like whatever they type to end up in a comment attached to the cell. The cell itself should remain blank, but the comment should contain whatever was typed.
The only way to accomplish this task is through the use of a macro. Using the event handler capabilities of Excel, you can create a macro that is triggered whenever a cell is changed. If the changed cell happens to be the cell that you want the comment associated with, then you can transfer the cell contents to the comment and remove them from the cell itself. The following short macro will do that:
Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range) Dim rCell As Range Dim sTemp As String Set rCell = Range("B4") If Not Intersect(Target, rCell) Is Nothing Then sTemp = rCell.Value rCell.ClearComments If Len(sTemp) > 0 Then Application.EnableEvents = False On Error Resume Next rCell.AddComment rCell.Comment.Text Text:=sTemp On Error GoTo 0 rCell.ClearContents Application.EnableEvents = True End If End If End Sub
Note that since this is an event handler, it needs to be added to the code module for the worksheet you want affected. In this case, the move-to-comment code is triggered only when a change is made in cell B4; this address can be changed in the code, if desired.
It should also be noted that this macro is only triggered once the user finishes entering something into cell B4. It isn't triggered as the user starts to type. So, actual data entry still occurs in cell B4, not in the comment itself. Further, if someone types something into cell B4, then any existing comment is lost because the macro deletes it before moving the cell contents into the comment.
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