Forum Discussion

ALV1179's avatar
ALV1179
Copper Contributor
Jun 24, 2022

comments on word for Mac

I'd like to see comments in a word document shown in balloons on the documents page. However, they are shown in a side bar, outside the document. does anyone know how to have them showing in balloons and on/within the documents page?

  • mtvet's avatar
    mtvet
    Copper Contributor
    Newsbreak....YOU CAN'T. If you HATE this "feature" then give as much negative feedback as possible through the in-app feedback tool. In the last year MS introduced what they refer to as 'Modern Comments' which is really just a pain in the butt for many users (as you can tell by the complaints rampant on the internet concerning this forced 'upgrade'). For a little while there was a checkbox to revert to the much more intuitive, useful and more functional style of balloon comments that they intentionally made temporary and appears to no longer be available. Some are rolling back to prior versions of Word because of this. Others are abandoning Word because of it. For some reason, MS doesn't acknowledge the problem and refuses to communicate about it.

    Write to them, call them, cajole them, do whatever you can to make that 'upgrade' optional rather than fiat.
    • mtvet's avatar
      mtvet
      Copper Contributor

      Stefan_Blom  NOPE....that option doesn't exist anymore. It was there as a temporary stopgap while they rolled out the 'feature'. No checkbox to turn off 'not-so-useful-modern-comments' in the most recent revision of Word for Mac 2021, nor a checkbox to disable modern comments. Where the checkbox USED to be (from what I can see in previous articles, etc) is blank. There is no way within the program to do it. If someone from Microsoft would like to comment or reveal some secret way to roll back just that, and go back to comments in balloons on the side of the text instead of the stupid comment pane (pain??) where you have to 'post' your comment and there's no control over autocorrect, spellcheck, etc, that would be wonderful. 

       

      If Microsoft would re-implement the enable modern comments option that you can un-check, THAT would be wonderful. If they would do away with it altogether that would be wonderful as well.  Leaving things as they are is just unacceptable.

      • mtvet 

         

        Thanks for the update. 

         

        I wasn't aware that the check box had been removed in subscription versions of Word/Office for Mac. It is still present (at File > Options > General) in Word 365 for Windows (specifically Microsoft 365 Personal, Word version 2206).

Resources