Switching off comment notifications in word documents

Angela McGhin 

This post was a while ago, but I found myself with the same issue today (2023). We use SharePoint and this is how I've managed to solve it incase others need help with this too:

• Log on to your SharePoint online account (you will need to have Admin access rights or get someone with admin access rights to do it for you)
• Click on the SharePoint logo top left to get to the Start Page:
• 
• Click on Settings widget top right and select 'Email notification settings':
• Deselect the notifications you don't want. This will then apply to all users in the organisation using your sharepoint files.
• 
  

   

Angela McGhin I realize you asked your question years ago, but I was wondering weather you tried removing the authors from the document? (So when you go to file - info - related people (bottom right). I was wondering if that would stop the author from getting emails when people post comments

MS tell us here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-mention-in-comments-to-tag-someone-for-feedback-644bf689-31a0-4977-a4fb-afe01820c1fd?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us
That when you get the email notifying of a comment in a file, you can turn off further email notifications for that one file from within the email. See the "How to turn off notifications in Outlook" heading at the bottom of the page.

In my testing emails that came to me after someone @mentioned my name in a comment DID not contain the slider to turn off notifications, microsoft mention in the link above.

BUT
in an older email (May 2020) sent because I was @mentioned in a comment , there was a link that redirected to

https:// mytenant-my.sharepoint.com/personal/firstname_lastname_mytenant.com/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?p=22

Which is also mentioned on the Microsoft link above.

This suggests that Microsoft expect that OneDrive settings to control ALL comment notifications either from documents held in OneDrive or held in SharePoint online.

It looks like the implementation isn't complete or relies on other tenant wide settings.

Does anyone have a good understanding of this they could share ?

Angela McGhin 

The following method worked for me:

1. Go to OneDrive online (can be found in your App Launcher in an internet browser)
2. Go to Settings (Gear icon on the top right)
3. Under OneDrive, click OneDrive Settings
4. The first page you land on is Notification Settings, switch the necessary functions to OFF. That's it!

Angela McGhin We have submitted a user voice to get this feature changed, please vote:  https://office365.uservoice.com/forums/264636-general/suggestions/41445055-balance-email-notifications-on-comment-replies

Angela McGhin, did you hear anything from Microsoft about this? Our users started getting emails 2 weeks ago and it's too much emails just on commenting.

Hi Angela McGhin

I don't suppose you have come across a way to turn off the email notifications? We are having the same issue and it is crazy to get so many email notifications when replying to a document with many comments. 

Thanks,

Randi

Hi Angela,

I'm glad I'm not the only one struggling with this! First told about this today by a colleague who is replying to comments in a (long, involved) Word doc and another colleague is getting emails galore telling him a comment has been replied to, which he's not best pleased about.

Looking into it I can find a note explaining that @mentions are now good for Word files, and that's fine. And when I test it myself I get a colleague to @ me in a file I shared and then when I reply, even if I don't @ them back, that colleague get's an email. What's confusing for me however is that looking at the Word file causing the initial problems, no-one has been @ mentioned in the comments, but the emails still get fired off whenever a comment is then replied to. 

I can't find any documentation on how 'Replying to comments' has changed recently in Office 365. Hopefully someone here can point us in the right direction. Meanwhile I'll keep looking.

Paul