Forum Discussion
notes attached to cells not visible, broken since last excel update (Office 365 on Mac)
I have figured out the root cause of the problem I have experienced, I don't know whether it will apply to everyone with the similar problems:
Starting from Office 2016 and Office 365 Microsoft changed the way comments worked on the cells. New commenting feature has additional features like replying and resolving to comments called "threaded comments". The problem is that you can't see these comments using an earlier version of Office, in my case Office 2013 pro. I suspect even you have a compatible office version you need to be sign in to office 365 with a Microsft account. The thing is, you can actually see and just can't, but since you can't edit the document you can't resize the comment popup window so that you can see the rest of content (your comment). The reason is Microsoft alters your document puts a reminder in before each of your comments that says “you can actually read the comment but not edit bla bla ”, but this reminder is the only thing visible unless you resize that window which you can't. So the actual content of the comment is unreadable.
The option/solution which does not have this problem for newer versions of Office is: commenting by not choosing “insert comment” but “new note” in the context menu of a cell. Unlike the earlier versions of office this classical way of doing things is renamed from "insert comment" to "new note". So when you use the new office and excel for the first time, you unsuspectingly comment with the "new comment" tool but it's a new thing that does not work as the old comment feature and practically you can't see the contents, and definitely can't edit with earlier versions and un-signed-in office 365 versions. You need to use “new comment” to avodi future headaches and to be able to see it when using earlier versions of office and un-signed-in office 365 Excel.
In my opinion this is blunder for Microsfot which was the champion of backward compatibility.
edit: you can resize the comment window and see the rest of the comment and your content with office 2013 but you can realize this after days of frustration. You still cant see the content if you are not signed in to office 365..
Thanks for all the info, but here's what happened:
I clicked the icon "Show comments" in the Ribbon, and got a message in the sidebar pane: "There are no Comments in this file." This is not surprising, since I always use "New Note" rather than "Comment."
Then I went back and re-read a post from earlier in this thread: I selected the errant cell, then hit "Edit Note" in the ribbon. That brought up the callout line, terminating in an invisible note. At that point I was able to grab the "stem" line and stretch it open (sort of like pulling down a window shade), and voila! There was my Note. The problem I ran into previously was that simply clicking the affected cell brought up the "stem" line, but the instant I moved the Plus-shaped cursor out of the cell in an attempt to grab the stem line, the line disappeared! The way to evoke the stem line and make it stay on screen is to click "Edit Note" in the Ribbon.
So I eventually got there. Thanks to all for your help!!
Jim6373My issue is that "edit notes" does nothing on any cell in one particular column that has cells with notes. No stem lines, no notes appearing, no nothing. The column has different formatting on different rows -- it is not a consistently formatted column. The formatting is similar to adjacent columns that are not having this issue -- notes show fine in the adjacent columns. Very bizarre that this one column would not show notes when I click 'edit notes'.
The only way to see my notes in that column is to select "show/hide all notes", in which case the dozens of notes I have all appear at once in a jumbled mess. I have all updates installed and rebooting did not help.
opieandy123456 I found that copying and pasting the cell to a blank cell, then cutting and pasting it back to the original cell allows me to edit after getting the symptoms you were having. Just a workaround, but better than closing and opening the file (which doesn't work for me anyway).
