Introducing Modern Comments in Microsoft Word

As many of you have noticed, modern comments is in the process of being re-released to Current Channel customers with the October monthly update. If you are on the Current Channel release (and have a build of 16.0.14430.20000 or later) you will start seeing modern comments return with new updates. If you are on an Insiders release channel these same updates are also in the process of rolling out. The blog above has been updated to reflect the current release status for modern comments, key details copied here as well for visibility. 

As previously noted in this post, we have been working on bringing a set of changes to the experience to address the feedback from this community. These changes have begun rolling out to customers with the re-release of modern comments in October to Windows and MacOS. 

• Quick Edit:  we have made it easier to enter edit mode for a comment by showing the edit button in the comment.  
• Ctrl+Enter  &  Cmd+Enter awareness:  these keyboard shortcuts are now visible in the comment to encourage their usage for posting a comment.
• Comment anchor connection: we have adjusted the highlighting of text and content referenced by a comment to make it easier to see what a comment is referring to. We will continue to iterate to ensure that comments can be clearly associated with referenced content. 
• Tracked Changes: Show Revisions Inline:  when you have a document with comments and track changes we have made it easier to learn about using “Show All Revisions inline” setting to show track changes on the canvas instead of between the comments.  
• Image support: modern comments will now display existing images in comments without needing to open the Revisions pane to view (note: support to add new images to comments will come in a subsequent update).  
• Font colors: modern comments will now display existing font formatting (note: support to edit font formatting will come in a subsequent update).  
• Selection interaction improvements:  you can now expand and read another comment while a draft comment is in progress.  
• AutoCorrect (currently only available in Insiders channel): basic AutoCorrect functionality is now supported with modern comments and you can now use custom or existing AutoCorrect shortcuts to complete your commenting workflows (see FAQ linked in the blog for more details).

In addition to these updates, we have also heard your broader feedback about the current ability for Modern comments to support more complex workflows and have made the following additional change as planned.  

• Opt-out: we have added support for a new opt-out toggle in Word’s Options dialog. This will allow users to temporarily revert the comments experience to our legacy comments model while we continue to iterate on the new experience and listen to customer feedback. Note that you will need to restart Word to apply this change. 

As we are gradually re-releasing the feature, not all customers will see modern comments on their system. In addition, as the changes described above are not broadly available to everyone yet, even once modern comments is back, not all customers will see all of these features immediately, while we continue to roll them out. 

Graham_H this is why you have noticed some feature are available to you and some are not. Once these changes above are available to all users with modern comments I will share that update here as well. Note, you called out font options are still disabled, this will remain the case as with this new update we currently only support display of font formatting and not editing that formatting directly. This will change in a upcoming update. The same applies to image support; our update will now support displaying images in comments, but not insert/edit just yet. 

ChrisTribble I have messaged you directly for more information needed to understand some of the issues you're having. 

Thank you all for your continued feedback on this forum, and please continue to share and provide feedback on the experience.