Forum Discussion
Can I remove Modern Comments and revert back?
My Word (on Microsoft 365) has updated to Modern Comments. I have a number of problems with the useability of these comments, based on the way I have used them in the past (for context, I am an educator and primarily use them when marking student assignments).
The main issue is that autotext is no longer supported in a comment. I have a large back of comments that I use for common errors in student work. Some of these comments are up to a paragraph, or contain URLs to instructions for certain things. It's incredibly helpful to be able to insert these quickly and will increase my marking time substantially if I can't use them.
Comments are slow to open. If I open a comment using a keyboard shortcut (on a Windows computer) and start typing, the first one or two letters often gets inserted into the main text
They don't use the same autocorrect tools as the main text. My typing has evolved to use those features. Two capital letters at the start of a comment don't get corrected, and simple typos don't get corrected
There are more steps to use them than before. I don't share my documents, so being able to edit comments and post when they're finalised is not particularly useful for me, as no one else is looking at them until I send the document. However, I can't click out of it to finish, I have to click or ctrl+Enter to post. I also can't just click INTO it to edit, I have to click on more buttons.
It doesn't make sense to only be allowed to edit one comment at a time, particularly if the idea is to not post them until you're ready to share with others. Sometimes in the course of writing one comment, I want to comment on something else first and then come back to the previous comment. You're forced to finish one first, to the standard you're happy for others to see, defeating the purpose of not having to post until it's finished. Why not allow multiple to be in draft?
If I forget to post and try to type a new comment, it pulls me back to my previous comment and starts typing, making me lose my spot where I wanted the next comment
It has added an extra space to the side of the document, which wouldn't be an issue except that making any formatting changes under tracked change, which I often also do when marking assignments, goes into the ORIGINAL pane where comments use to be, widening the document even further (extra space for formatting, then another extra space for comments). My computer screen isn't large enough to cope with the extra width.
Once I post a comment, it's still selected. There have been a number of times I've posted a comment then tried to ctrl+F something in the document, but it won't respond to my ctrl+F. Not something that is necessarily a huge issue but it is annoying and I can't see the purpose for keeping a comment selected when it's posted and non-responsive.
Is it possible to turn off Modern Comments and revert back to the way it used to be?
Send feedback to Microsoft to let them know what you think about the so-called modern comments; for instructions, see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-do-i-give-feedback-on-microsoft-office-2b102d44-b43f-4dd2-9ff4-23cf144cfb11.
Microsoft's rationale about "posting" is mentioned in the support article at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-modern-comments-in-word-edc6ae71-0a2d-49fe-8faa-986f1e48136a (which you may have seen already).
Finally, you should see an option to temporarily revert to the previous, more user-friendly interface at File > Options > General. Clear the check box next to "Enable modern comments."
220 Replies
Microsoft has introduced a temporary option in Word that lets you turn off Modern Comments and revert to Classic Comments. Unfortunately, we must expect that the option will disappear some day. To get the old comment features back: Select File > Options > General > turn OFF the Enable modern comments check box https://halafurniture.com/blue-carpets/
- What an absolute hero! Thanks
I completely agree - this is extremely inconvenient and doesn't make sense at all!
I was able to go back to the old version but I fear the day this option will be disabled.
Another issue is that, even though the comments are in English, I have to align them each time to the left so that the words are in the right order. I think this has to do with the fact that I have an RTL language as one of the languages installed.
- File=>Options=>General and unclick the "enable modern comments
chiara369I am so grateful for this entire thread. I am happy to know there are so many like myself who completely hate this "modern comments" update to Word. I don't like the idea of never updating the thing again, as some are setting their devices to prevent. There may be some things that need to be fixed. (I had that weird problem where I'd save a document under a new name but then it didn't... that's another story.) But given that so many people have complained about this new comments thing, maybe we can make "modern comments" this year's New Coke.
I too am an educator who uses the comments feature much the way you and others have described. I also often save these documents as PDF files in case students have different version of Word (like Word for Mac) and don't always see the edits and corrections I've made. In this "modern comments" age, I actually see that some of my comments are MISSING in the pdf I've saved. (I figured a workaround by using "print to pdf," but why should we need a workaround?)
I suppose that yes documents are evolving, but there are still plenty of us who work in isolation on documents in order to give feedback.
The other workaround -- where you go to File=>Options=>General and unclick the "enable modern comments" box seems to be having the desired effect... But again, why do we need these workarounds??
Again, thanks all for "getting me"! 🙂
- Thank you! 'go to File=>Options=>General and unclick the "enable modern comments" ' has saved my day!
I totally agree. I hate comments in the far right. Ridiculous update chiara369
Unfortunately, Word has adopted a new Comments section incompatible with higher education. As the original poster of this thread has stated, all of the issues are sound. There must be a way to revert back to using the track changes as they were. Any help would save hours of time.
Even after more than a year,, there seems to be no thinking going on at Microsoft in this regard and users are still forced in June 2022 to use the bloated, Adobe Acrobat-like comment feature. The defects of this so-called new style of comment insertion are mentioned all over the Internet. It is functionally very limited; has lost most of the power of old-style comments; wastes a lot more of user time as well as screen estate; and is a wonderful source of irritation, if you ever lacked it in your day to day work.
Assuming you also track the changes in your documents, you can actually get back to old-style comments. But seeing that Microsoft has shown the history of having the idée fixe of continuously worsening the user experience with its "new" features (often a poor copy from other OSes), this might not be usable for much long.
What you need to do is:
- open a document
- make some tracked changes in it
- save it as a different document.
- use the Compare feature to compare the "old" version and the "new"
- save the resulting document,, again, as different (or just go ahead replace the old one with this)
And that's a rather long of it! You have a document that has the old-style comments and any new you insert will be the old style one with all its functions.
Suhaag I tried your recommendation and mostly it worked. When I insert a new comment, the panel still pops up, which did not happen in the previous versions--only with the Modern Comment addition. I appreciate your effort to work around this tremendously inconvenient "improvement."
- I agree with this comment. I use the commenting feature to communicate with large teams in a business environment, and the changes have made this at least 2X as difficult to work with. It needs to have an option to revert.
- I agree. It is so frustrating to see everything moving to shared documentation while at the same time seeing the usability decrease. More and more, I consider using alternatives that allow more flexibility and usability.
- good
