Just adding my vote to the requests to provide a way to use the old commenting system. Not only does the new one require more steps on an ongoing basis, but as the last comment from anisoaraj notes, it's incredibly disruptive to workflow when a comment is accidentally left open and then you try to add a new comment. At the very least, why can't Word automatically close the last comment if we add a new one?
Edited to add: I learned you can supposedly turn this off, but two issues:
- The setting is in the General tab rather than the Track Changes tab that Word takes you to if you use the Markup Options…Preferences dropdown in the Review ribbon. So not at all easy to find. I only learned about it through earlier comments in this thread.
- It doesn't appear to work! I deselected "Enable modern comments", created a new document, went to add a comment, and it's still in the "modern" style. WTH?
Microsoft