Wednesday, October 16th, 2013

A Comment on Comments

Sometimes you’ll want to add a comment to a piece of text but not so that it actually appears in the text.

For example you may want to ask someone else who is working on the document with you a question about something mentioned in the text or you may want to remind yourself to check the source of a quote you have used. The best choice for this task is Word’s Comment option. Select the text to attach the comment to and select Review > New Comment. A comment box will open to the side of the document with your initials and a comment number in brackets (eg [HB1]).

If your initials or name are incorrect, alter them by selecting File > Options > General and changing the Username and Initials text boxes.

If you’re viewing a document which contains a number of comments you can move from one to the next quickly by using the Previous and Next. Use the Delete Comment button to delete a comment, leaving the text it’s attached to intact – right clicking a comment and selecting Delete Comment works the same way. You can edit the text in a comment simply by selecting the comment and typing.

You can choose to print with or without comments by selecting the print range dropdown menu under print settings and checking or unchecking Print Markup.

Using comments is particularly useful when you’re working on a document with someone else as they effectively allow you to ‘carry on a conversation’ about the document.

Helen Bradley

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007

Pictures inside Excel comments

In a previous tip of the day, I showed you how to create shaped comments in Excel but today I’m going to go one step further and create pictures inside the comment.

As you might expect, start off in Excel and add a comment to a cell. Right-click the cell and choose Show comment and then click the border of the comment to select it. Choose Format, Comment and, from the Colors & Lines tab’s Color dropdown list choose Fill Effects and then the Picture tab and click Select Picture.

Find a picture to add to your comment from those in your My Pictures folder, enable the Lock Picture Aspect Ratio checkbox and click OK twice. You’ll now have the image inside your comment.

Depending on the image that you have used you may want to change the format of the text, for example coloring it a different color and sizing it large enough so that it can be easily seen.

Helen Bradley

Saturday, March 17th, 2007

Any shape Excel Comments

I like to use comments in my Excel worksheets but sometimes the square yellow boxes just don’t do it for me.

Luckily with a little bit of imagination and skill, I can change the shape of my comment boxes.

Here’s how to do it yourself:

Add a comment to your worksheet and click the cell that contains the comment, right-click and choose Edit Comment and then click on the border of the comment so you have it selected.

Now, from the Drawing toolbar click the Draw button and choose the Change AutoShape option in the menu. You can select from all sorts of shapes including stars and banners and flowchart symbols.

When you’re done just click outside the comment and the change will be created for you. Neat stuff? I think so.

Helen Bradley