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
Iron Contributor

@DrGMHunt I will #microsoft_modern_comments_suck too. I’ve already done something similar. 

Also, curious. Is there really some way to roll back this update? If so, please share. It’s been days, but feels like weeks, and I’m no closer to getting used to this debacle. In fact, modern comments is finding new ways to tick me off! Really, when did Microsoft Word become the newest social media platform? 

Thanks everybody. We have to keep up the pressure. Comments are for work. It’s not Twitter or Instagram, for goodness’s sake. No need to ‘at’ anybody. 

Brass Contributor

Je perds mon temps, donc du travail, depuis la semaine dernière avec les commentaires dits "modernes".

- Mon document se ferme systématiquement lorsque je veux rajouter un commentaire et je perds les derniers éléments tapés.

- Je dois enregistrer manuellement à chaque modification.

Je veux revenir en arrière !!! Vous avez joué aux apprentis sorciers et nous en faisons tous les frais ! 

Brass Contributor

@Katie Sullivan @Theo Lorrain-Hale How do we make sure this is turned off for all users? It is a terrible change and must be revertable.

Brass Contributor

I believe at this point the only solution is for users to send negative report en-mass.

 

In Word, go on File, and on the top right corner there are a smiley and a sad face which can be clicked on to give feedback. 

I left the following feedback:

"The so-called Modern comment functionality is awful, slows down work and just bad BAD B-A-D! There should be an option to use the old comment functionality instead of the new one."

Copper Contributor

Well, I just used the new Comments for the first time. After noticing that my document changed to Dark Mode unexpectedly (a change I could like, but why not warn me and show me how to turn it off?). And it says "start a conversation"! Barf. Must you insert this cutesy-poo crapola? This is my professional work space, not a social media thread. It's the **bleep** paperclip all over again.

Brass Contributor

Hey, if you guys are mad now, just wait until you open a document that has landscape orientation.

 

Lock up your guns and make sure there are no sharp objects nearby before you do though.  

Brass Contributor

New discovery - when you go to insert a comment, it will start by placing it in one location, but then when you "send" it moves the comment below some of the other comments in the document. I don't know why it couldn't have been designed to simply post in the same location where it first appears. Why would they move the comment location between initially inserting and posting? This just adds to completely disorienting nature of everything else going on with the changes. 

 

I discovered this when I added a comment saying "refer to this person's comment below." When I clicked "send," the comment physically moved below the comments I referenced, so I had to go back and edit and change my text to "above."

 

And the reason I had to add a separate comment, instead of noting it in the discussion thread, is because I need to add reference notes that I absolutely do not want to be sent to other team members. I have to add extra comments as bookmarks about info that needs to be researched further, and I need to ensure that people won't get tagged. 

Brass Contributor

@MoMaier FYI they moved the location of the useful article and killed it, instead of redirecting to the new link. Because, of course this is issue being handled with all the care and consideration of a bull charging through a china shop. 

 

So, here's the new link to the article that has some explanations of how to use the functionality (which was never linked to or included in the blog post either): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-modern-comments-in-word-edc6ae71-0a2d-49fe-8faa-986... 

 

Copper Contributor

MICROSOFT: This is a disaster. Simply awful. I generally love MS Word. Why make it like Google Docs? Google Docs is free, remember?

Read through the comments. There's not a single positive one. 

Please revert back to how it was ASAP.

 

Or tell us how to do it.

Copper Contributor

How can I revert back to the way it was?

Copper Contributor

Absolutely agree this is terrible!!! Why on earth would you disable the autocheck and autocorrect feature in comments. Many of us read dozens of documents on a daily basis and often have the make the very same comments over and over. We have set up shortcuts using autocorrect. Now none of that works! Just infuriating. So sick of this company and its monopoly. Why do you constantly foist changes like this on people?? Give us an OPTION!

Thanks to those who posed info on how to revert to an earlier version. However, just tried reverting to January version (Build 16.0.13628.20274) and when I open Word, I still have the **bleep** "modern comments." Just so angry!!

Copper Contributor

UPDATE: Just restarted my computer and it has now reverted to an earlier version and I have the previous style of comments back. So this does work. Happy to share that will all of you equally frustrated--which seems to be everyone here. (Of course, the instructions on the MS webpage for reverting said nothing about restarting to make this change final. No surprise.)

Copper Contributor

My proofreading and editing services company has a custom Word add-in to help us use consistent comments for our customers. The comments were styled nicely and included a hyperlink for more information. This update has blown that tool up. Many of our freelance editors started reporting that our tool no longer posted comments (instead, only posting empty comments) and reported the comments started appearing different; I now see what they mean. Word's comment API only pastes plain text, which completely ruins our comment library. Thanks, Microsoft, for trying to be like Google Docs while completely changing the entire comment methodology... Not everyone needs to chat via a Word doc. Sometimes, comments are just comments to help the author improve their writing.

Copper Contributor

Another stinking so-called "upgrade that adds more steps to the commenting process. Previously, you simply click comment and write. Now, everything must be "posted" as well. How many times have you had to go back to close out the previous comment before starting the new one? Since the users at MSFT likely don't actually use their crummy product, it's no wonder they can't just leave well enough alone.

 

My question, how to turn off the stupid "Smart Comment" feature??

Copper Contributor

Agreed with @JohnC888. My company's freelancers have complained about having to go back to "post" a previous comment. There is always a learning curve, but this seems like a large leap that brings down efficiency.

 

There should be a setting in the Options to revert to the old comment style since not everyone plans to work in a collaborative way. Some people simply receive a document, revise, comment, then return. This is common for editing services company, both large and freelance-level.

Brass Contributor

Bonsoir à tous,

Je parle français et donc tant pis pour les traductions aléatoires.
J'ai réussi comme "mah8420" à revenir à une version antérieure, merci à elle. En même temps, ce n'est pas le but. Je paie pour des mises à jour conformes, je les ai bloquées. Je pense acheter une version 2019 sans mises à jour et quitter cette version actuelle. Si mon problème de commentaires est réglé, ce n'est pas le cas de l'enregistrement qui reste "récupération automatique", alors que moi, j'avais programmé "enregistrement toutes les 5 minutes". Même avec mon retour en arrière, cette fonction ne marche plus.

Merci à tous de vos commentaires, nous sommes peut-être peu nombreux dans le monde à utiliser ces fonctions-là, mais pour nous elles sont essentielles dans votre travail et nous handicapent actuellement !

Vaccinons-nous contre la connerie aussi !

Copper Contributor

Just bizarre and frustrating. I use comments a lot for marking student papers, sending lumps of revisions back to grad students etc. I do not want to open a conversation in these contexts. To suddenly lose this feature is causing me no end of headache. 

 

Why not just have an option to use the original format? It should be perfectly clear that the original "comments" is a very different tool than "modern comments". 

Brass Contributor

Je ne lâcherai pas, je paie un abonnement et j'ai  dû revenir à une version antérieure, c'est se moquer du monde. Merci à @Aaron1555  pour:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-revert-to-an-earlier-version-of-office-2bd5c457-a91...

Pour moi, c'est une option provisoire. Ils ont en plus déplacé ce blog !

 

Copper Contributor

This new design is absolutely horrible and I've yet to find a way to go back to the old way.

As many other stated, it is cumbersome: not a very clever use of space. Most of the time, I'm not willing to start a conversation: it's either notes for myself or guidance/editing. Too many ''collaboration'' features become a hindrance to do real work at some point.  

 

 

Copper Contributor

NO right-to-left language support for the new comments. It's moderen but not useful. How do I go back???????????????

Copper Contributor

This is a nightmare for editors. Please fix all of the critical issues users listed here ASAP, Microsoft! 

Copper Contributor

The "improvement" is horrible!!!!!!

I hate the "post" function - if you forget to post, you cannot create a new comment, you cannot resolve other's comment - it always takes you back to the previous comment and force you to POST it!!!!

Whenever you click on the small comment icon to view the comment, your document zoomed out and by clicking the icon again it does not zoom back in! YOU THOUGHT IT SHOULD BE TWO-WAY BUT IT IS NOT!

Why can't you test the function before making the update????????????????????????

 

Really angry - waste a lot of my time!!!!!!

Brass Contributor

IT IS SORTED, HURRAY :)

 

Just got new update on my Mac so the current Word version is: 16.49 (21050901) This is Microsoft 365 Subscription for Mac. It works as it was - thank you God! Thank Microsoft for not making it more difficult.

Brass Contributor

How the heck do I use superscripts and subscripts in comments? (This web page comment reply box has more functionality than the options for new comments in Word!)

Brass Contributor

I've now reverted an earlier version of Word, in the hope that the new fangled upgrade is removed in the future. 

Copper Contributor

The new comments format are terrible for me and my work. Hope there will be an option to revert to old comments formatting. Sheesh.  

Copper Contributor

Ghrrrrrr, what the heck were they thinking! Why, why oh why.... anyone at Microsoft tested this before forcing it on their users. I haven't seen anyone comment on this but I also now receive an email every time a comment is made in a shared document EVEN THOUGH my team does not use @  in the comments, and all our settings on onedrive regarding notification are unchecked. 

I received 50 emails and....still struggling to just provide feedback that way I used to. I get the need for ongoing improvement but this is far from improvement.....

 

Iron Contributor

Question, when people are reverting to older versions, do they pick from the Current Channel, the Monthly Enterprise Channel, the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel (Preview), or the Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel? I can't even find the mythical 13231.20110 on the versions page, so maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.

Iron Contributor

Update, I've got my old comments back. In this thread user @Bgwilson commented

 

To remove the modern comments feature try deleting the following two keys from the registry. You should make the usual backup first.

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\Ecs\word]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\FirstSession\word]

After doing this (and disabling auto office updates to be sure it sticks) and rebooting (not sure if needed), my trusty old comments are back. No reverting to older versions needed. 

 

Disclaimer, I have no idea whether this can break anything else, so create a Restore Point and/or export the keys before deleting them so you can merge them back if needed. Remember, messing around with the Registry Editor can break lots of things quite badly, do this at your own risk. 

 

To find these keys, open the registry editor (WinKey-R then type regedit (enter)) then once in regedit hit CTRL-F and search for ExperimentConfigs. Again, first export the keys about to be deleted so you can revert the change if needed.

 

Hope this helps others. If it causes problems, please report back here. 

 

Edit:  this solution works but unfortunately doesn't stick on my system, hopefully others have better luck.

First I had Office set to not update inside Word > Account > Office updates, but it looks like the Windows app store ran an Office update anyway, and possibly related: modern comments came back. I removed the keys again, and disabled automatic updates in the windows app store. Today the modern comments are back again, as are the keys. Not sure what keeps regenerating those keys, word itself, or a separate service that I can disable. If anyone knows a better solution, please post, thanks!

Copper Contributor

Like others here I am struggling to adjust to this change.  I use comments to mark and give feedback on work completed by apprentices and other learners.  The previous comments system was quick and easy to use.  In the new system clicking in and out uses up time and makes it much harder for me to see the feedback that I've given when reviewing documents.  I've also had comments disappearing whilst I've been editing and had to go into read mode to find them.  I really don't want to go back to a previous version of Word and I would just like to be able to switch Modern Comments off and go back to the version that works perfectly for me. 

  

Brass Contributor

@ChromeRefugeeThank you!!  Simple and easy to do and the b£$%p modern comments are gone.

 

Will report here if any apparent side effects.

 

So simple, why on earth have Microsoft not added a 'switch back to old comments' button.

Iron Contributor

@ChromeRefugee  Awesome!!!

 

@DrGMHunt  my guess is the answer is as simple as it is troubling:

  • MS in their ivory tower are too full of themselves and think their newest concoction is the bee’s knees, and arrogantly presume that there can be no reason whatsoever why anyone ever would want or need to do things differently.
  • they presumably intend to phase out the old code eventually, and want to crush any hopes of sticking with it immediately.

There is a pattern here - this is the same circus time and time again. They push any stupid update on us without warning and without any chance to opt out because they need us as their Guinea pigs since public testing is cheaper than proper beta-testing, and simply insist everyone adapt. Then they lie that there’s nothing that can be done until someone else finally figures out the switch is really just one or two registry entries or group policies that could easily be a toggle in the program settings if they did not want to deliberately deny you options.

 

Quite frankly, I think it is about time that serious lawyers or politics take on this bully behaviour and restrict what kinds of changes software companies can force on you without requiring you to opt in or at least allow opting out. And while we’re at it, things would be far less problematic if those corporations would actually face legal consequences if they messed up. Of course, the current situation with the comments function is more of a nuisance than catastrophe in the grand scheme of things, and there have been far worse update blunders before, but maybe those developers would put a little more thought into things before they recklessly and with impunity push out rushed updates for ‘public tests’ that break people’s productivity out of nowhere, if they were liable to at least some degree for the damages and lost time. Not a legal expert here (but I think a few might be if I recall correctly that a few people in this thread are editors for legal firms), but I assume they are pretty much on the safe side and can tinker with updates as they please, because they allowed themselves to in the EULAs no one reads anymore and just agrees to frustratedly when there’s a new one every couple of months. Indeed, this whole Windows (or Office) “as a service” mantra is a joke, and presumably a legal scheme to wiggle out of responsibility for the software PRODUCT I use. And this has to stop.

 

(I apologize – once again - for the slightly off-topic rant, but as you can tell those ‘modern’ comments still have me worked up; but this is not the first rodeo I have with MS's update policy)

Copper Contributor

I got my old comments back as well, using this trick:

(Thanks to @ChromeRefugee )

In this thread user @Bgwilson commented

 

To remove the modern comments feature try deleting the following two keys from the registry. You should make the usual backup first.

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\Ecs\word]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\FirstSession\word]

 

Copper Contributor

I HATE this new feature, please add an option to activate the legacy mode.

Brass Contributor

@MoMaier  your post precisely describes how i feel about things as well.

Copper Contributor

@MoMaier @DrPooky I third that comment. It's spot on and shows that the problem is deeper than one flawed feature update. I notice every single one of the comments here is negative--that should send a message to the Microsoft team, but I fear they won't heed it! This is the dark side of cloud & aaS, shoving unwanted changes at users without warning and with no thought to how many users are going to have their billable time wasted adapting to pointless "improvements".

Iron Contributor

I can only concur with what appears to be the majority of comments with this change to working practice; and I, too, only registered simply to give feedback on this issue. The change is an absolute abomination. The inability to utilise autotext in 'conversations' is bugbear no. 1. Equally important (to me at least) is that it now appears impossible to use MathType equations to query authors in these new comment boxes. And I think another potential issue is the presence of that "Send" button right next to the "cancel/delete" button. I'll never, repeat NEVER, want to directly email/message my comments to the author(s), but I can see inadvertent sending of comments happening.
Bring back/allow user the choice on which comments to use!

Iron Contributor

The registry key deletions noted up page work a dream, btw. So, I'm glad I butted in.

Copper Contributor

The keys keeps coming back (and the modern comments). Does anybody know why or have any solutions?

Iron Contributor

Presumably every time you close a Word file down and open a new one this happens. Perhaps keeping one Word doc open may work (not tested that myself, yet).

 

For now, I've created a *.reg file on my desktop, using Notepad, called 'Esc_word.reg' and will run it as I need it.

 

You can call your file whatever you want, as long as it's *.reg (you will have to select "All Files" when saving and add the '.reg', otherwise you will have a txt file).

 

Open Notepad and type the following, without the dashes (which demarcate the required text):

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version x.yz

 

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\FirstSession\word]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs\Ecs\word]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


The blank line after x.yz is *important*, and x.yz should be the version of regedit you have.

 

If you've backed up/exported the offending key(s) then you can choose Edit to look at that file you will see your regedit version number at the top. In my case this is 5.00

 

So, when you open Word and notice the new communications instead of old comment style, run the .reg file, close down the offending Word file and reopen it and you should have old comments style (I do).

 

Best I can do until something better comes along.

Brass Contributor

@KarenL007  @PeterL64 

I had that problem - I think it might have been because I turned off office updates after I’d deleted the keys. To turn off updates open word click file and update options ( or something like that) and select no updates.

 

then close word delete keys and try again.

 

hope that works

Iron Contributor

@DrGMHunt 

Thanks for the heads up. I will try the 'update route', though not updating Word is probably not a good idea in the medium to long term.

Brass Contributor

I can only agree with all of the criticisms of this new comments function. Some of the functionality I rely upon has been removed and if my authors can't see my comments if they use an older version of word, then not only has it taken me twice as long as normal to mark up a text, but it was all a waste of time too. You've just made my job so much harder, and it seems like there are lots of us in the same position. Please let us have the old system back!!!!

Brass Contributor

The new comment structure has added a great deal of work and frustration. PLEASE do not make us click repeatedly to do anything (e.g., edit a comment, post a comment). How is this better? It's not. This is extremely frustrating. And it's not just a question of not liking change—this is objectively worse.

Copper Contributor

@DrGMHunt @PeterL64  thank you both! I did disable the update already (both the office update and the app store update) but the keys kept coming back... I will try Peter's tip about the reg txt file...

 

Steel Contributor
@mah8420 the revert route does indeed work and will stay that way unless updated. But it does seem to need a few restarts to fully clear its head and return to proper previous comment function.
 
 
 
 
 

 @ChromeRefugee My Office is on the Current channel. So far the revert to previous version is holding but there may come a point (as has happened in the past) when something in a Windows 10 update fiddles with something that Office is dependent on and I will start to get glitches. The previous time I had to revert, a Windows update eventually led to palm recognition/pen use being very clunky and I was forced to update Office to overcome it. The Regedit trick should work but tends to be more volatile in that other software appears to change keys or override their effect, or Office itself does for some reason. There are many dependencies between Office and other parts of Windows. With my pen problem after update, I noted that although the registry changes I made were still as I had set them, behaviour changed anyway. 
@MoMaier I totally agree, and you are entitled to rant. When you buy something you expect it to do what it says and not morph into something else without warning. There was a reason I bought 365 service over just using a cracked download or other nonlegal route, which, let's face it half the world do! It was for the reliability and useability, in particular the ability to customize. MS seems to be making that ever harder.

@Rafal1980Are you saying yours went from Modern Comments back to the original format but you are on actually on a current/latest version of 365 Subscription?

Iron Contributor

@KarenL007 

You can run the *.reg file before opening a doc, too. The Word file you open should then come up in old comments style. This obviously saves a bit of time closing down and opening up the file.

 

So the registry change seems to occur on exit of a doc. IIRC, it's possible to make reg entries read only, so that the system can't overwrite them. But I'm not sure that's the way to go with this ... just yet anyway.

 

Iron Contributor

Aargh!

 

https://insider.office.com/en-us/blog/redesigned-comments-in-word
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/office/blogs/word-comments-vba-deprecation/
https://insider.office.com/en-us/blog/modern-commenting-in-word

 

I hope I'm wrong, but I fear we have as much chance of turning back the tide as King Cnut (think I've got the spelling correct!) did, given this change has been in development for over 2 years.

 

If MS don't provide an option to choose classic or new comments, then I'm opting out of 365 subscription and reinstalling my Word 2013.

 

This registry hack involves Experiment... keys, and it will presumably only work as long as old comments are available in the distributed version you have, as I presume once the new comments move from Experiment... keys the old comments won't be available. And looking at the said registry keys, this will be rolled out across the whole office platform. I shall have to dig out my very old Excel as well.

 

Someone tell me I'm wrong, please.

Copper Contributor

I will also be canceling my MS 365 subscription and reinstalling MS Office 2013. I only registered here to voice my frustration that these updates contained zero consideration of their users, who PAY for this product. I love upgrades, moving forward, and tech that helps me edit more efficiently, which is why I had a subscription rather than an older copy, but this is not that. This wastes my time and will never be an efficient way to work. Anything that forces you to click more and removes time saving customizations is not an upgrade. It’s ridiculous! Unless MS resolves this problem, I will be canceling my subscription. 

Brass Contributor

Je suis également prête à annuler mon abonnement parce que je ne constate aucune réponse de MS depuis trois semaines. Je ne paie pas une version destinée à me faciliter mon travail pour me retrouver avec des documents qui plantent sans arrêt. Je me doute que ma mise à niveau revenue en janvier ne tiendra pas dans le temps et reviendra incompatible. Je suis dégoûtée !

Kallie Bracken est la responsable de ce désastre préparé depuis décembre 2019 !

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‎Dec 17 2021 10:09 AM
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