Switching off comment notifications in word documents

[Angela McGhin]

Hi - is it possible to turn off email notifications for replies to comments in a word document? We seem to get a notification about new comments every time the document is saved, and as Word autosaves, this is getting to be fairly frequent on large documents with lots of discussion!

We actually don't need to be emailed at all so if there's a way to disable the notifications altogether that would be great.

[#2]

Did the person who is the author or owner of the document turn it off on their "side" as well. Might be something that can be turned off at a tenant level in the O365 settings.

[#3]

I don't believe this has a "frequency" option, it is on or off. TEAMS is the only application that the settings for @ mention has a frequency that I have noticed.

[#4]

Great, thanks for that tip @Kory Hirak!

[#5]

MS tell us here
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-mention-in-comments-to-tag-someone-for-feedback-644bf...
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 ?

[#6]

The emails sent by Word or Powerpoint online when comments are made to documents held in SharePoint online sites linked to Teams have 2 different formats in my case:

• Subject line : UserName replied to a comment in "DocumentTitle"
  • this email has the following footer
    

    Why am I receiving this notification from Office?

    Microsoft logoPrivacy Statement | Notification Settings

  • The "Notifications settings" link takes the user to https:// mytenant-my.sharepoint.com/personal/recipientfirstname_recipientlastname_mytenant_com/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?p=22
• Subject line : UserName replied to a comment in "DocumentTitle".
  • this email has the following footer
    Why am I receiving this notification from Office?
  • Which links to 
    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/why-am-i-receiving-email-notifications-from-office-3b6803... 

When I change my OneDrive settings here
https:// mytenant-my.sharepoint.com/personal/recipientfirstname_recipientlastname_mytenant_com/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?p=22

• Email notification when others reply to your comments
  • to off
    • I no longer get the Subject line : UserName replied to a comment in "DocumentTitle" emails
• Email notification when others comment on my documents
  • I can't get this to do anything ? on or off.

[#7]

Microsoft products are a tool. They should think of them like a chisel. You don't take a chisel and turn it into a rubber duck, because you feel like it. The craftsman would be very angry and break your neck. So they should not be surprised if there will be craftsmen breaking their necks, next time they implement features to the chisel, that make the tool useless or cost the craftsmen time to disable if they can be disabled at all. &TLDR; No email notifications. EVER. PERIOD.

[#8]

@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

[#9]

@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.
• 
  

[#10]

The other place to turn off notification is on the email notification itself. Scroll to the bottom of the email. If you just want to stop notification for that file, toggle it off. If you want to stop it for all files, click 'Notification Settings' which will open the notifications specifically related to the email address receiving the notifications. Toggle applicable ones to off. See screenshots below:

[#11]

@Von Zantua 

I'm having the same problem. I was just editing a word document with some notes to the side of the file and my professor has gotten a ton of emails about it. It's a shared file on Onedrive. Is this ANY way to turn this notification feature off? 

[#12]

See my answer in the thread above - get your professor to click on the Notifications Settings at the bottom of the email notification they got. Then toggle 'off' all the ones in notification settings.