Introducing Modern Comments in Microsoft Word
Published Apr 09 2021 12:02 PM 197K Views
Microsoft

Workplace collaboration is evolving—and so is Microsoft Word. Today, we're pleased to announce expanded availability of our new modern commenting experience across Word platforms

 

Modern comments sets the stage for a richer Word collaboration experience for you and your teams by enabling modern features such as @mention notifications and more. It aligns how comments work across Office on different endpoints, so that you and your team can rely on a consistent experience regardless of whether you’re using Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on any platform.

 

Modern comments was first introduced on the mobile and Web versions of Word where we iterated based on feedback.  Now it is rolling out to Production on Word for Windows and MacOS! 

 

 

Here's a look at what to expect:

 

Stay in control 

With modern comments, you no longer have to worry about your comments being seen by others before you’re finished editing them. After you draft a new comment or reply, click the Post button or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Enter (Windows) or Cmd + Enter (MacOS) to share your thoughts with others.   Now, a comment or reply can only be edited by the person who created it. 

 

Click the Post button to share your commentsClick the Post button to share your comments

Flexibility in how you view and interact with comments 

In Word you'll find comments to the right of your page, by default. In this view, contextual comments are side-by-side with the page content, to help you focus on the feedback that’s most relevant to the part of the document you’re working on.  

In the Comments pane, you can see a single list of all comments in your document, including resolved comments.  To switch between the contextual view and the Comments pane, simply click the Comments button in the upper right corner of your Word window. 

 

Switch between contextual view and the Comments paneSwitch between contextual view and the Comments pane

Resolve comment threads 

Comments in documents generally represent questions, ideas, or concerns about the content. When those have been addressed, comments allow you to mark that thread as resolved. Resolved comment threads won't appear in the contextual view (though you can still find them in the Comments pane) to help you stay focused on what’s active. 

 

Resolve comment threadsResolve comment threads

Improved @mentions in comments

Users have been adding names to comments for years. Now, if you’re an enterprise user working on cloud files, you can more easily use an @mention to call out to one or more of your colleagues in your organization or school.  Just highlight some text, click the Comment button, type your comment, and @mention anyone you want to see it.

 

When you post your comment, anybody that you've @mentioned in it will get an email notification. Whoever started the comment thread will also be notified. Notification emails let your collaborators know there’s been new activity in the comment thread, gives them a preview of the document content where the comment was made, as well as the comment you left. They can reply to your comment from the email, or they can click a link in the notification email to open the document and go straight to the comment if they want to see more context. 

 

Better collaboration practices for today's remote world

These new commenting experiences are ideal for today's remote teams who may be working together from across town or around the world.  Comments eliminate the need to coordinate schedules or conduct in-person discussions, providing greater flexibility and enabling collaborators to provide better insights.  A consistent experience across applications makes everything flow smoothly.

 

What we have heard 

 

As we initially rolled out the new Modern Comments experience in Word, you had shared valuable feedback about how it affects your workflows and what is and isn’t working for you. Your feedback enables us to improve the experience for all users.  

 

Here’s some of what we heard: 

  • Concern that comments created with modern comments are not backwards compatible – We want to ensure you are aware that any comment created with Modern comments can be consumed and interacted with by users on earlier or non-Microsoft 365 versions of Word and vice versa. 
  • Reduced efficiency in working with comments, particularly in posting or editing comments  
  • Not all formatting was supported in comments, such as font color 
  • Not all content was supported in comments, such as images 
  • Autocorrect was not supported, including custom autocorrect shortcuts used to save time 
  • Comments and tracked changes layout takes up screen real estate and pushes comments further from the page 
  • Grammar checking is not available in comments  
  • It is more challenging to see where comments are connected to, without the dotted lines 

 

What’s next?   

(Updated as of October 14, 2021) 

 

As previously noted in this post, we have been working on bringing a set of changes to the experience to address the feedback from this community. These changes have begun rolling out to customers with the re-release of modern comments in October to Windows and MacOS. 

  • Quick Edit:  we have made it easier to enter edit mode for a comment by showing the edit button in the comment.  
  • Ctrl+Enter  &  Cmd+Enter awareness:  these keyboard shortcuts are now visible in the comment to encourage their usage for posting a comment.
  • Comment anchor connection: we have adjusted the highlighting of text and content referenced by a comment to make it easier to see what a comment is referring to. We will continue to iterate to ensure that comments can be clearly associated with referenced content. 
  • Tracked Changes: Show Revisions Inline:  when you have a document with comments and track changes we have made it easier to learn about using “Show All Revisions inline” setting to show track changes on the canvas instead of between the comments (see the FAQ link below to try this out today).  
  • Image support: modern comments will now display existing images in comments without needing to open the Revisions pane to view (note: support to add new images to comments will come in a subsequent update).  
  • Font colors: modern comments will now display existing font formatting (note: support to edit font formatting will come in a subsequent update).  
  • Selection interaction improvements:  you can now expand and read another comment while a draft comment is in progress.  
  • AutoCorrect (currently only available in Insiders channel): basic AutoCorrect functionality is now supported with modern comments and you can now use custom or existing AutoCorrect shortcuts to complete your commenting workflows (see the FAQ link below for more details).

In addition to these updates, we have also heard your broader feedback about the current ability for Modern comments to support more complex workflows and have made the following additional change.  

  • Opt-out: we have added support for a new opt-out toggle in Word’s Options dialog. This will allow users to temporarily revert the comments experience to our legacy comments model while we continue to iterate on the new experience and listen to customer feedback (see the FAQ link below for more details).

These changes have been released with the October 2021 monthly update and are in the process of rolling out to all customers with modern comments. Some users will not have these changes available immediately until the roll out process is complete (for instance you might see modern comments are available but the Quick Edit button is not yet visible). 

 

We have additional updates planned beyond these as well, and we will let you know more in the future.  

 

What you can do 

 

We have outlined a set of FAQs that give guidance and tips on the most common questions we hear from customers, including workarounds available to you today.  Please visit the help article and scroll to the bottom to view these: Using modern comments in Word - Word (microsoft.com). 

 

Please continue to leave in-app feedback about the experience.  We actively review this feedback to prioritize improvements. 

 

If you don’t have Modern Comments yet but can’t wait to try it, join our Office Insider Program.

 

See our support page for more information: Using Modern Comments in Word.

518 Comments
Copper Contributor

I would like to confirm the seemingly universal disappointment I can read here.

I am also utterly disappointed by the lack of internal user testing processes that could have highlighted the controversial nature of this loss of existing functionalities and lack of thoughtful, deliberate process before making important changes such as this. At the least, this change should have been optional.

This is a serious change in many users' business process, especially for small businesses who have no power to impose separate document negotiating or commenting/discussion tools for documents.

This also shakes my confidence in the Microsoft Word (for Windows) applications, which I've been using a lot since 1989. Unfortunately, it is exactly the commenting functionality that has the biggest problem in compatibility with alternatives to Microsoft Word. But at least this one is a good excuse to dump Office 365 and buy 2016 again as long as that is supported, and try to find a reliable solution in the longer term.

Brass Contributor

Right; thank you.  I "discovered" that after somehow getting out of a comment (took a while, making me feel REALLY stupid - lol).  It's nuts.  I started "working" at 9:55 this morning, and I have yet to get my head back on straight in order to start billing.  This change - if I choose to use it, which I will not - could double my editing hours.  Like I said, I will start using a legend based on highlighted text.  I won't even try to use this "improvement" after this morning's experience.  I appreciate your heart to help.  Have a good day.

Brass Contributor

I opened up a shared word document this morning in an absolute panic because the comment column is gone. That means when you first open a document, it is not clear whether or not there are comments. This is going to really negatively impact my day-to-day workflow. I would like information on how I can revert back to the previous interface. This simply does not make sense from a user standpoint. I am going to have to switch back and forth between the comment view constantly, and with how slow and cumbersome Sharepoint is when more than one user is in a document, this could legitimately lead to me missing deadlines. I am truly at a loss for words as to why this seemed like a good idea to your development team. 

Brass Contributor

I agree with everyone here - modern Comments just appeared in my document today. Struggling to remain polite and respectful. No warning, no explanation and my work totally disrupted. I work in the legal industry - I only exchange documents & comments under careful control - I would never collaborate directly online on a document. So none of the features Microsoft have introduced help and the down side is I keep forgetting to do the extra click to 'post' so end up accidentally editing the last comment instead of writing a new one.

 

I really thought that after the 'lets remove the Windows button so everyone has to pretend they're on a tablet' debacle that MS would have learnt they need to allow people to CHOOSE whether to use new features. Apparently not.

 

Wishing I were back using WordPerfect and actively looking for an alternative to Word

 

 

 

Brass Contributor

I found another thread, with more info that may be useful... https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-modern-comments-in-word-edc6ae71-0a2d-49fe-8faa-986... 

it was specifically for 365.

 

Go down to the FAQs and there are some tips about opening in the "Reviewing" pane. Also links to feature feedback. 

Iron Contributor

@GentleReader I really like that plan. I freelance, mostly, but I can certainly encourage my authors (especially my current project who lost a full day because I was so annoyed and stunned!) to do so. 

 

Perhaps in the meanwhile, I'll be able to revert? I'm still astonished at how fast this happened. One minute I'm happily beavering away, the next all sorts of weirdness disrupted my day. 

 

I hate the new 'Barbie' comment style. Style over substance. Never a good plan, MS!

 

Copper Contributor

Unnecessary change. How do I switch it back?

Iron Contributor

Earlier in this thread tens of responders described their serious problems with the Modern comments (MC). As there has been no reaction from Microsoft so far and new members in this discussion are repeatedly calling for help, I have summed up my and other’s observations and advice how to return to the traditional comments:

  • practically every contributor in this thread complained about serious negative effects of MC on their work. They were users that obviously rely on the traditional comments tools in their roles as instructors, editors, accountants, teachers, lawyers etc. Those who do not use Word mainly in dynamic on-line cooperation directly sharing documents being developed but rather for more traditional work witch structured complex texts, in such cooperation with others that does not have to be of the “@mention” type
  • many of them loudly asked for the possibility to return to the traditional comments
  • some of us noted that the MC were enforced to users randomly and quietly; for example in my organization only a few of us were forced into MC, the rest of Word 365 users were left with the old comments - all having the same version of Word (16.06.13901.20366)!          
  • some of us reported a successful return to the old comments be reverting to an earlier version of Word 365. I have used this  procedure and it has worked fine, though it requires some experimentation. I had to return to the version (13231.20110), TiogshiLaj reported success with returning to the version (13426.20322) from December 2020. After the revert it is necessary to lock the automatic Office updates in account settings!

I am pleasantly surprised that despite the difficulties and lost time that Microsoft caused to many the discussion in this thread has been so relatively polite and factual. I hope that reflecting this attitude Microsoft will finally also say something. Soon. Hopefully leaving the MC as an option only.

Copper Contributor

This update is NOT improving my workflow. I don't share documents in real time because I'm an editor and I need to maintain static copies of the documents I review to ensure version control and to preserve the "record" of the edited document.

 

  • Why don't shortcuts that I've assigned to symbols work in comments?
  •  
  • Why can't I change the font style of my comments?
  •  
  • Why can't I make edits to the document without "posting" the comment?

 

If I'm not working "online" why can't I just use the old comments functions? I can see how the new comments features would help when multiple people are collaborating simultaneously, but what about those of us for whom this just isn't the purpose of comments? You've removed important tools for us to effectively and easily communicate feedback. 

 

 

Steel Contributor


@TonoS I think whether individual machines are updated or not depends on which Channel it is under (see About Word on theAccount page). Mine is on Current Channel. 
@taxwoutrep1350 shortcuts no longer work in there because new Modern Comments has been stripped of all automation, and that has crippled me because I have hundreds of shortcuts, macros, autocompletes and autocorrects which I use all day.  It already takes longer to mark up an article on a pc than it used to by hand, I have no wiggle room left for losing time.
@Editrix How come you are using white on a black background? Fortunately I have not seen any changes to my black on white. 
@GentleReader That is a great idea about getting publishers to complain in their feedback. MS have shut down all routes to inform them of how negatively this is affecting professional users, all we have is the Feedback button above Options in Office itself.  I urge everyone to use that at least.

Brass Contributor

Day 2 of trying to use modern comments. No one else in my firm seems to have been subjected to this unwanted update. This means that their comments sometimes appear in the regular comment pane, but mine float to the right of it. Sometimes their comments are floating too. When I have both the comment pane and the floating comments I get an immediate red-x synching error from Sharepoint and all work has to cease from all parties until we can resolve the issue. We have a noon deadline. 

Iron Contributor

@gwalsh27  Same here.  No one else at my organization has been subjected to this change.  In fact, my collogue and I have the same version of office 365 (16.0.13091.20436).  She can still use the classic comments but I have to use the modern comment format. 

 

Thoughts anyone?

Iron Contributor

@Susan Coward and @GentleReader:  Great idea about getting the publishers/clients to complain to MS about this. If I knew any, I would do it in a heartbeat. I emailed Katie Sullivan (the writer of the Microsoft article) suggesting that she or someone at MS review our comments, but I haven't heard back from her or anyone else.

Someone on this thread should have contacts with bloggers or others in the industry or press who report on issues like this - or do it themselves. I've searched on Google but nothing comes up other than Microsoft's own cheery announcement. 

Copper Contributor

As a freelancer, I must stay most current so I can handle whatever my publishing-house clients throw at me. The pandemic has only accelerated the digitization of workflow. But authors aren't expected to match their publisher's platform. The publishers won't pay for it. And we editors shouldn't be doing tech support for authors any more than we should be doing their taxes. It's hard enough getting the talent to follow standards other than the technical.

 

In-house editors, now scattered into working in their own homes, often on their own gear, may struggle to keep up with their own department's uniformity of platform, too.

 

Now that I'm squinting at my copy thanks to "modern commenting" eating up my 14" display's real estate, I look forward to Microsoft sending me a check for a larger, harder-to-lug-around laptop in the name of "workplace collaboration" that seems like the fever dream of an HR newbie.

Iron Contributor

@bbecker222 thank you very much for finding and linking to this FAQ, this was a highly interesting read. (I’ll re-link to it just for convenience  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-modern-comments-in-word-edc6ae71-0a2d-49fe-8faa-986 )

This is insightful not so much for the “help” MS provides on this support page than as an embarrassing testament to the unfolding train wreck and damage control they now seem intent to come out of looking stellar without any signs of shame, apology or even acknowledging that maybe this was disruptive.

I mean, I am still straining to keep it civil and constructive, but are MS [just imagine some extensive swearing here] kidding me? This adds insult to injury.

I really love the recurring “If [such and such] in the default comment cards is essential to your workflow, let us know using the in-app feedback, so we can prioritize future improvements to modern comments.” Maybe not take it away in the first place?!? Get specific feedback before you do??? I can spend all day (and practically have) writing “feedback” probably no one will ever read, when the damage is already done. On this note: screw your in-App feedback system! How about giving your feedback writers more than a tiny textbox to describe often complex issues and contexts, and if you have to enforce a character limit (I counted it at 1000), maybe provide a live counter or at least previous warning so I don’t suddenly hit the restriction half-way through my unfinished feedback.

 

Ok, interesting, so you actually can still format and insert in comments... Good to know. All you need to do is open the comment, then open the error-prone reviewing pane, YET ANOTHER ----ING PANE TAKING UP ADDITIONAL SPACE (Someone at MS sure seems to like those fancy cinemascope ultrawide screens), and edit in there. If you had somehow still managed to keep track of where in the document you are or the content in the jumpy comment bubbles is anchored to, feel free to get lost in the reviewing pane, and god help you if THAT thing decides to jump. And of course, unless you suspect hidden content in the comment while viewing rather than writing them and open the reviewing pane to check, you will never know.

 

Here is a constructive idea: improve the reviewing pane, then you can keep your modern comments for those who need them to communicate in live contexts. Give the reviewing pane a filter (including the distinction between solved/resolved comments) and make it more navigable, and I just might not need to interact with the new comment bubbles at all.

 

Another constructive idea, that could solve at least some issues at once. Implement an “Editor mode”. If I am working alone on a document, anyway, I do not need to be afraid who can see my comments as I type them, now do I? If you need to, lock the entire document for other users while it is in this editor mode; fine by me. Just add comments live as you type or "post" them collectively when you leave the mode or save the document (I suggest the former because of crashs).

 

Or add an “annotations” function. No need to re-invent the wheel, just use the previous comments system under a different name. Personally, I do not even need to be able to “answer” an annotation as long as I can edit it and mark or unmark it as resolved. That way, those of us who work alone and offline on local documents can use that instead of what seems to be billed as a “messenger app” within Word.

 

Or, you know, you could just let users choose in the program options which commenting system they want to work in.

Copper Contributor

Thank you for doubling the time and effort it takes for me to conduct reviews of my team's reports! How many clicks to post or edit a comment? Way too many. No one at my company likes these modern comments. 

Iron Contributor

One more observation to add: even if you jump through all the hoops necessary to apply colour highlight to text in modern comments (via the “start” ribbon), it now disappears when viewed from the mobile version of Word (Android) – I must admit I am not quite sure if that at least displayed highlights before, but I somehow think so and it strikes me as missing now...

 

About the different build versions and who gets to “enjoy” the redesign: having followed all of your reports so far, it seems evident to me that the switch is not simply linked to the version or build of the program or the development channel you are in. If people have had success with reverting to traditional comments, but needed to roll back to different previous versions until the reversal was eventually triggered and things “snapped back”, this can only mean that the code for modern comments has been implemented quite a while back (@TonoS mentions having had to return all the way back to 13231.20110 to escape). It seems that MS has simply now arrived at randomly activating users in the current channel in a sample-sized trickling rollout, but this must be a change that is triggered from the server-side for each running instance of the program individually (my second PC, same version, same 365 account, has not been switched despite working on the same online document).

I also suspect that this is a change that should be reversible in both directions within the same instance and version of Word. I noticed that my PC already contaminated by modern comments opened at least one older document in the old design (although I do not remember which document and cannot currently reproduce this – not sure if it was in safe or compatibility mode or whatever). The point is that I am fairly sure that this is something that in principle could be toggled between both modes, at least for the time being, but MS won’t let you (although or rather because I suspect that they intend to entirely remove the old code eventually. They'll just sit this one out until we nay-sayers get tired and grudgingly accept our fate).  

 

Maybe what we need are not beta-tester but hackers, which makes me wonder why I am still paying for a legitimate licence...

Copper Contributor

I absolutely 100% HATE everything about Modern Comments.

 

I'm a writer and an editor. I'm not sure who had the bright idea to not make the comments searchable and put the comments SO FAR AWAY from the actual work they're COMMENTING on. I want to launch this update into the sun. I actually lost MONEY because it is taking me so long to work with these clunky, ridiculous comments. I cannot stress how much I hate Modern Comments, how it has ruined my workday.

 

I want a way to turn Modern Comments OFF so I can go back to the other, useful, workable comments.

 

IF I WANTED TO WORK IN GOOGLE DOCS, I WOULD WORK IN GOOGLE DOCS. This is like every single thing I HATE about working in Google docs THRUST into my trusty, useful Microsoft experience. It is a living nightmare. Please, please give me a way to get rid of it. :facepalm:

Copper Contributor

Totally agree.  I have just spend the afternoon on  a call trying to go through comments with my clients, and comments don't show up in the location where they are required. I can't tell if the documetn has comments, and it takes me twice as long to edit documents since I now can't just type comments. And if I don't 'post' then I cant go on to the next.

 

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go back to the old comments.

Iron Contributor

Hey Microsoft! What's the plan? Even after a couple of days and a bottle of wine, I'm still exquisitely ticked off.

 

I read my comment, think "Oh, I missed a comma there." Because I'm an editor, I need flawless grammar in my comments. Could I just click and fix? No! I have to edit? I finished another comment, hit 'enter' as I have been doing for eons, moved on, looked up... What? Comment gone? Because I didn't hold the mouse, move it and click on post? This is horrid. Inefficient. In a word, stupid. A fix of a thing that wasn't broken.

 

I understand that many do live collaborations. I do not. I don't want to 'start a discussion'. And I certainly do not want to now teach the writers I work with how to use a new version of comments. 

 

When will the choice to revert to the previous version be available? Thanks, 

Frustrated Editor

 

Iron Contributor

@KiBrosius I am feeling your pain. 

 

I did not pay for this disaster. I agree with you re: using google docs. Looks like MS has opened the field for a usurper, eh? No longer is it a "trusty, useful Microsoft experience".

 

Keep up the pressure, folks. Maybe we can win this one!

Iron Contributor

One more thing. I sometimes type a colon followed by a parenthesis. Suddenly I'm back to getting an emoticon. I do not want an emoticon. I cannot for the life of me disable it suddenly, which I'd done ages ago. I am not a teenager!

Brass Contributor

Please, please give us the ability to revert back to the traditional comment style. The worst part of this (as others have noted) is that Word is now useless without a widescreen monitor. I simply cannot see the comments which are now floating outside, past the right-hand margin where tracked changes are visible. It's a grossly inefficient use of space. And the comment boxes are only partially visible. Please make this an optional feature for those who want it.  

Brass Contributor

I hate the "modern comments" feature because of the following reasons: 

 

  1. Making it harder to see where the comment points within the text by eliminating the in-text highlights and dotted line connecting the text to the comment box; 
  2. Requiring the comment to be "posted" by either using an enter arrow or keystroke command rather than, say just typing it normally;
  3. Requiring the user to open a drop down to select "edit" just to be able to continue or revise the comment;
  4. Wreaking havoc when the document is used on different versions of Word; and
  5.  Eliminating spell and grammar check within the comment so people can see what a terrible speller I am?

It is a shame that MS use the term "Modern" Comments.  I advise many students' thesis and dissertation by using the comment feature, and it is a pain that I am required to click the arrow button or three dots all the time when I create a comment or revise one.  Wow.. I am so curious about who were in the development team of the "modern comments" feature. I am pretty sure that the development team members have not used the modern comment feature at all. .. 

Brass Contributor

Please refund my money or give me an option that I can use the legacy version of commenting feature. 

Copper Contributor

I hate this new modern **bleep**!!! Please provide a way to reverse back!!!

Copper Contributor

just gave up using office and switched to other app

Brass Contributor

Each day I use this functionality I find a new set of problems. I am accustomed to pasting images into the comments as part of the information I provide to certain team members. It functioned at first, I clicked "send" and the image appeared in the comment. I was relieved it still worked. Started working in the document and went back up and noticed the image disappeared. I tried pasting and updating several times, with the same result. The image posts, but then just disappears after a minute or so. Very unstable and frustrating. 

Copper Contributor

ramccaskill, Editrix, and others have expressed my frustrations perfectly.

I and my editing and document layout colleagues find that these changes to MS Word comments have made our jobs much harder and more time consuming. 
And we do not have the option of trying to fix this by rolling back to some previous version of Word in our corporate environment.
(1) It is too difficult to see the "document anchor highlights" that are supposed to light up when I select a comment. The highlights are way too light and don't contrast enough with the typically white background. Please bring back the dotted lines that connected the comment to the content that it applies to.
(2) It is not helpful to have to hit an extra key or button to post new comments. Authors and reviewers inside and outside of our organization make comments on documents, and action items are strictly controlled by the editing team, not by automatic email notices. In addition, our government client must "anonymize" document drafts for privacy reasons, making this feature useless.
(3) The layout of the "modern" comments extends too far to the right of my documents now, taking up extra screen space, which makes it much harder to review two or more documents side by side on the same screen, which is something I must do very frequently.

 

Please reinstate the previous MS Word comment layout asap!

Copper Contributor

I work as a teacher in an MFA program, and unless I can turn this nonsense off it's a huge setback for me. We work on manuscripts that are NOT, repeat NOT collaborative. There is to be one master copy, which only the student controls. Your system confuses that clear mandate. Worse, it won't allow me to put pictures in the Comment bubbles, I discovered today. I saved a LOT of time by using logos and photos to make my point. Now I will have to completely rework my marking system. I am not happy with that.

 

So, what I really need, is an OFF switch.

Copper Contributor

Every de facto tech support millennial on every team at every organization is cursing y'all over these comments. Barb is not going to remember to press the extra button to post. 

 

These comments have interrupted my team's work more than I care to explain, but here are the highlights. 

 

  • No more color coding with text
  • Annoying process to get a PDF with a markup 
  • The extra click to post a comment is not worth the trouble

Please make modern comments opt-in. 

Brass Contributor

MS, you must listen to your customers' voices! We are getting frustrated everyday due to the modern comments.  too many clicks to post comments...  

Copper Contributor

Hello,

 

Thank you for sharing this information with us! Unfortunately, I'm an editor and this new version of comments has really slowed down my work. I'm hoping it's just a lack of familiarity on my part. To that end, I have a few questions I'm hoping someone can help me with:

 

Q: The new version of Word comments doesn't recognize common characters used in Word documents, such as the long hyphen (em dash). How do I enable comments to recognize and allow these keystrokes?

 

Q: The new version of Word comments doesn't allow me to press enter to post a comment. How do I go back to the quicker "Enter to post" sequence? (This is the same sequence enabled me to skip down lines by pressing "Enter" and "Shift.")

Q: The new version of Word forces me to pull up a separate window to format words into links. It's cumbersome and takes longer. Is there a way to go back to the old version?

Q: The new version of Word makes it more difficult to attach a new comment to word(s) where a comment already exists. Is there a way around this? I often have to make more than one comment in the same place.

I don't mind updates. I understand they are necessary and know there's a learning curve, but these new attributes related to comments have really slowed down my work! Help!

 

Copper Contributor

I can no longer use Word comments, which are part of half my work, on my 14" laptop. This is at 85% zoom, too small for me to edit the text accurately, yet still not small enough for reading the new second column of comments without endlessly dragging the horizontal scroll bar back and forth, on top of all the added clicking described above. But I can't not use Word. This is forcing me to get a new 17" laptop, whose humongosity will in turn limit my ability to work while traveling.

 

modern comments.jpg

 

Iron Contributor

Based on these and other comments, this change appears catastrophically detrimental for professional editors, and I'm turning off my Office updates until a workaround for this feature is provided. Am I going to have to rewrite all of the Word macros I created that rely on the old comment structure? That is literally days of unnecessary work.

Brass Contributor

I tweeted a thread that poses the basic question: what problem are these changes intended to solve? As is obvious from the comments on this forum, the new system makes Word less useful for the majority of users. Who was asking for these features? The blog post simply says what these features do, but gives no indication of why anybody would want them. In what circumstances are these features useful? For whom do they make work easier? It seems that these features were added simply because they could be, not because they should be. 

Brass Contributor

Please make this new version of commenting go away! It's clunky, it's time-consuming, and it's not necessary. Not everyone collaborates like this. If we wanted to use Google Docs, we'd use Google Docs! Don't drive us away.

Copper Contributor

Hi,

 

The new comment style in word is totally unfriendly. There is no option available to view the comment as viewable before this update. Infect we are not able to find the text we mentioned text in the comment.

 

You are request to provide flexibility/option to view comment as per old style or new style. It will help users to work more efficiently.

 

Thanks and Regards,

Girish Dutt

Copper Contributor

I'm a professional editor and writer, and therefore a frequent user of the comments function. I concur with many of these negative comments and have also found the update has seriously disrupted my workflow (I have been using it since April 29). The new functionalities do not improve my work experience in any way. The comment function is rarely used collaboratively in my work, and the times it did, the "reply" function worked fine. Of most concern is the extra space any Word document with comments now takes up onscreen, as I am often working with references and templates beside the active document (and I work on a large screen, I can't imagine trying to work on a laptop). The additional clicks and mousing required to enter, edit or delete comments also add up to a great deal more time and unnecessary interruptions. Please provide users with a way to revert to classic comments, which worked beautifully.

Copper Contributor

Just adding my voice here as someone who absolutely relies on fast, easy, and fully functional commenting capability within Word for my living as an editor. This new feature is beyond horrible for all the reasons my good colleagues have detailed above. Now I have to take the time out of my day to try to roll back to a previous version I could actually work in instead of this pathetic nonsense. How about giving people the choice of which version they want? Maybe some do need the interactive style, but I can guarantee you that many many many of us do not need or want it. As if our lives haven't been difficult enough this past year. 

Brass Contributor

just an update. so current Mac update of MS Word turns old comments in old files into "modern comments" as well. Last version was keeping old files unchanged and kept classic comments in classic form. Dear Microsoft, please give me a choice and let me use old way of commenting! Who asked for this "upgrade"?

Brass Contributor

Like everyone else here, this new rollout has caused me significant extra work and inconvenience.

 

Perhaps it is time for us all to pool our talents and resources and destroy microsoft.

Copper Contributor

I have nothing to add to what other users have pointed out on this forum, especially the impact to widespread and long-standing norms for document editing and negotiation in the legal profession.  The loss of time and efficiency became so intolerable that I had to block off my afternoon and follow the excellent guidance of the posters in this forum to roll back this update and stop future automatic updates until this is reverted, or an option is introduced to use traditional comments.  It is unfathomable that this was pushed through without warning to the single most important piece of productivity software in existence for every profession in the business of producing documents.  If this was tested internally, Microsoft's in-house lawyers must be so used to never having to negotiate their forms that the impending disruption to the remainder of the legal profession went unforeseen. 

Copper Contributor

I was happy to see that everyone absolutely despises this change as much as I do.

 

Can you please, please listen to our cries and at least give users a choice as to if they want to use this or not? 

Brass Contributor

I am going to advocate in my company to switch to LibreOffice and Apple Pages both work with classic comments. This is ridiculous! First as Mac user I was treated as 2nd class customer with inferior Office product compared to Windows version, although, I am paying as much as Windows customer just because stupid Apple cannot work together with stupid Microsoft. Now, this silly modern comments forced on us without any explanation how it is better - I would really love to learn how to use it and be more productive than with classic comments.... I like new technologies and I adapt fast but this comments are just plain **bleep**e!

 

Iron Contributor

Hello again fellow editors, lawyers, et al and Microsoft team,

 

After time off from this disaster, I can no longer dilly dally. I have work to lumber through. Yet, here I am writing again with a plea: Please give users who have no need for interactive 'discussions' via comments in Word, to revert. See the partial list of problems below:

 

1) No autocorrect or other tools in comments? So, I finish a comment, look and see I've missed a capital letter, or apostrophe. I click, but ...

2) I cannot simply make a correction, I have to click, choose to edit, then finish then ...

3) I can no longer simply use my pinky, hit enter, and finish my work. Oh no. I have to lift fingers from keyboard, sieze the mouse (aha! Spelled seize wrong and lookie! little red underline. Ironic, no?) and click the arrow to basically freeze the comment.

4) This thing is retroactive? Docs years old are coming up with modern comments showing! ARGH

 

The list of wrong things with this absurd update goes on, but if you folks at Microsoft have been paying attention, I needn't enumerate further. 

For goodness's sake, accept defeat and give us a choice! 

 

I'll be back, I'm sure.

Thanks for nothing @Pernille-Eskebo 

 

PS fellow users - keep the pressure up. 

 

Iron Contributor

And now, I see I have no way to disable turning a colon and parenthesis into an emoji! *sigh*

Stop it! Begging now, just fix this debacle.

Copper Contributor

I cannot believe how godawful the new Word comments system is, and I registered simply to give this feedback.

 

Let's say you forget to hit the godawful Ctrl+Enter keystroke, probably because you've been using the far superior existing comments system for years. You then scroll down 30 pages and continue you work until you need to make another comment. This feckless update will launch you back up 30 pages, just to finish the previous comment, completely breaking your workflow and losing whatever you were planning on doing.

 

Word is not a good program, but revisions like this are so baffling that you need to wonder whether the developers have ever used Word, or a computer, before.

Brass Contributor

So I've done something I vowed I would never do again, registered on Twitter, since its clear that no one  @Pernille-Eskebo takes any notice of this forum. Don't suppose they'll take any notice of #microsoft_modern_comments_suck either  - but you never know.

 

Just opened an old document with lots of comments from various people - there's now 3 inches of white space between the text and the comments - I have a wide screen so I can see them - but the human gaze is not meant to focus on two things at once and its is next to impossible to read the text and the comments together as I would normally do.

 

I'm going to have to devote a few hours to removing this update - think I may send Micrsosoft the bill!

Iron Contributor

WAS THIS TESTED WITH TEAMS?

 

Adding to the wasted space comments, this is disastrous if you're trying to do cooperative comment resolutions using Teams, WebEx, or any other conferencing program.  I work on developing technical standards, where many of our members use laptops.  Sharing a Word document with modern comments in a way that others can see the comment as well as the text being edited is no longer possible.  You spend all of your time moving between the text and comment, which is incredibly unproductive.

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‎Dec 17 2021 10:09 AM
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