Word 2000 in a Nutshell

Using Comments

After Track Changes, Comments are the most widely used collaborative tool in Word. Use comments to make notes and suggestions anywhere in a document’s text.

Comments can be a little quirky, as you’ll find out, but once you’re used to those quirks, comments are invaluable. Comments were first added to Word when Word’s designers noticed something: being able to track changes was great, but there was no good way to make side notations within a document. Many people were (and still are) making these notations right in the document (with Track Changes on) and then just rejecting the changes later to get rid of them. The problem with this method is that between actual changes to the document and the notations, the document can get pretty messy. Enter the comment.

Comments are really just notes attached at a selected point or to a selected piece of text in Word’s text layer. They are not shown within the main document window, but text is highlighted with a dull yellow to indicate that a comment exists. The comments themselves are viewed in a pop-up window by holding the pointer over the highlighted comment or in a separate pane at the bottom of the document window by using View → Comments. Comments are initialed (using the initials in Tools → Options → User Information) so you can tell who said what.

Inserting a Comment

Inserting a comment is easy. Move the insertion point to where the comment should appear or select a block of text to comment on. Choose Insert → Comment. ...