Introducing Modern Comments in Microsoft Word

I agree with you PeterL64 and I've been working on a simpler solution. I've managed to get it to work with a macro activated by a single custom icon in the ribbon.

The following macro when attached to a button in the ribbon changes a document over to the old style comments without apparently affecting the tracked changes, even for documents with edits and comments from different editors. The only thing is that it presents it in a new untitled document that should be saved before proceeding.

The macro code is as follows...

Sub NewDocumentWithOldComments()
'
' NewDocumentWithOldComments
'
'
   Application.MergeDocuments OriginalDocument:=ActiveDocument, _
        RevisedDocument:=ActiveDocument, Destination:= _
        wdCompareDestinationNew, Granularity:=wdGranularityWordLevel, _
        CompareFormatting:=True, CompareCaseChanges:=True, CompareWhitespace:= _
        True, CompareTables:=True, CompareHeaders:=True, CompareFootnotes:=True, _
        CompareTextboxes:=True, CompareFields:=True, CompareComments:=True, _
        CompareMoves:=True, OriginalAuthor:="Author", RevisedAuthor:="Author", _
        FormatFrom:=wdMergeFormatFromPrompt
        
End Sub

To install this macro...

1. Click on the Macros button in the View pane.

2. Choose View Macros.

3. If you already have macros, you can select one of them and press the Edit button. Then just paste the macro code listed above at the bottom of the Microsoft Visual Basic window that appears, making sure that there is a line between the last macro and this macro that you're pasting in.

4. If you don't have macros...

   a) Type a name into the Macro name field (e.g., "MyCustomMacros")

   b) Click on the Create button.

   c) Delete all text in the NewMacros window and paste in the macro code listed above.

5. Click on the Save button (or File>Save Normal) to save the macro.

Now just install a button on the ribbon pane and link it to the macro (instructions for this are at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-or-run-a-macro-c6b99036-905c-49a6-818a-dfb98b7c3c9c). Now with just clicking on the button the document will revert to the old format. Be sure to save the document after doing this so as to not lose subsequent changes in the document should Word quit unexpectedly.

Please be sure to save a back-up of important files before doing this. This is quite experimental and is only offered as an alternative to reverting to older versions and fiddling with the registry. If others could try it out and see if it works, that would be great. I hope it works as well for others as it has for me.