Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Word 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Word, click here: Printing Comments.

Printing Comments

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 28, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365

If you've defined a group of comments in your document, you may want to print them at some time. Word provides a variety of ways that your comments can appear when printed. Follow these steps if you are using Word 2007:

Press Ctrl+P. Word displays the Print dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Print dialog box.

Using the Print What drop-down list, choose either List of Markup or Document Showing Markup. (The first prints just the comments and other document markup, the second prints the document together with any comments and other document markup.)
Click OK.

If you are using Word 2010 or a later version, follow these steps instead:

Press Ctrl+P. Word displays the Print portion of the File tab.
Click the drop-down list immediately under the Settings label. The choices in this drop-down list allow you to specify exactly what it is you want to print. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2. The print settings options.

If you want to print just your comments (along with any other markup made to your document), choose List of Markup in the Document Properties section (Word 2010) or Document Info section (later versions of Word).
If you want to print your document together with your comments (along with any other markup made to your document), make sure Print Markup is selected and that you choose one of the options in the Document section.
Click the Print button.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (6049) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Printing Comments.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Printing Document Properties

Word maintains quite a bit of information about a document in a special collection of items called "properties." You can ...

Discover More

Removing Spaces

Need to get rid of spaces in a range of cells? There are two ways you can approach the task, as described here.

Discover More

Repeating Column Information on Each Page

When your table occupies lots of pages, you may want to have information in a particular column repeated on each page. ...

Discover More

Learning Made Easy! Quickly teach yourself how to format, publish, and share your content using Word 2013. With Step by Step, you set the pace, building and practicing the skills you need, just when you need them! Check out Microsoft Word 2013 Step by Step today!

More WordTips (ribbon)

Getting Rid of "Comment" in Comments

When you add a comment to a document, Word presents that comment in a very specific way. If you want to change the way in ...

Discover More

Pasting a Comment into Your Document

When developing a document, you may end up with all sorts of comments that you need to deal with. One common task is to ...

Discover More

Using Multiple References to a Single Comment

Find yourself repeating the same comment over and over? Here's a couple of ways you can save some typing by simply ...

Discover More

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

Notify me about new comments ONLY FOR THIS TIP

Notify me about new comments ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE

Hide my email address

What is 8 + 7?

2019-12-25 09:54:39

Oran Mitchell Jr

I am puzzled. Why does It seem that Printing envelopes in getting so difficult?

2018-10-22 02:08:51

Optimum Customer Service

These steps are very nice and very helpful for me with the help us I complete my work.
If you are using Gmail and you are facing error so you can read this post. https://bit.ly/2yOCihu

2018-09-25 06:11:05

enriqueiglesias

You have to have comments displaying as BALLOONS -- otherwise even if you select "Print Markup" you won't see them. (I had them showing inline only.) Review > Tracking > Show Markup > Show Only Comments and Formatting In Balloons
and for more help you can visit to the <a href="https://goo.gl/e9rJuM"> https://goo.gl/e9rJuM </a> and get the help

2018-09-24 01:36:41

Emma

I have the same issue as Elisabeth Wik Alakula. The print preview shows the comments, but when I print, no comments appear, only a grey column. and a printer is in an error state again and again.
https://bit.ly/2PZPLtQ

2018-04-25 06:42:56

Camilla Standing

When printing a document with comments, the comments are in a section on the right hand side. The problem is that the width of this comments section is also at the top and bottom of the document, which we don't want. We want the top and bottom margins to be small. Is there a way to change this ?

2016-12-06 03:28:39

Hi,
I have a word document that has foot notes, comments and is in track change mode. When I print, I need only the corrected text, footnotes and the comments. I do not want the trail of changes. How can I do this? Please help.

Regards,
Li

2016-11-01 15:30:44

vinnie

Thanks for the comment Daniel! That was also the secret that unlocked the mystery for me.

2016-06-24 15:54:22

frances

Daniel that's exactly what I needed to know. THANK YOU!!!

2016-06-07 05:06:53

Elisabeth Wik Alakula

Dear Allen,
I'm looking for information about the ballon margin when I use baloons and track changes in Word. If I change the margin where the baloons shows up in the document I want the margin to change in the printout as well, but it doesn't. I have Google and Google, but I can not find any information about this. I suppose that i can not affect the baloon margin for printout, but do you know something else?
Best regards, Elisabeth

2016-01-17 20:18:49

Cam

Thank you, Maria!! This fixed the problem i was having. excellent

2015-10-29 05:46:48

Chris

Excellent - easily understandable advice and worked first time. Cheers

2015-07-21 01:08:01

allison

thank you so much for the simplicity of your directions. This is exactly what I was looking for, so I can edit my paper with comments that were made.

2015-07-20 16:54:53

Jesse Hall

Maria...your advice to open in MS Word directly was the tip that finally worked for me! Thanks much!

2015-07-15 16:02:08

Daniel

I followed the directions in this post and also was dumbfounded that the comments were not appearing in my printed document. I finally figured out the magic setting: You have to have comments displaying as BALLOONS -- otherwise even if you select "Print Markup" you won't see them. (I had them showing inline only.)

Review > Tracking > Show Markup > Show Only Comments and Formatting In Balloons

2015-07-08 08:43:21

Lucie

This is what worked for me: In the Word document, click on one of the red lines on the left, then click print.

2015-06-23 16:03:53

Maria

Hey guys,

There's a weird setting with Word (and my experience is that it only happens intermittently), but Word won't print comments from a file launched from Windows Explorer.

However, if you launch Word by itself and then open the file from Word directly, it will print correctly. I have no clue *why*, but I've found it works.

2015-06-16 12:04:14

Brian

Same problem. Wasn't a problem till now. What's up?

2015-06-10 09:48:13

Henri

same issue as Alex, Kat, Gary and Shobha. I work at a law firm, i need the comments to be able to send marked up documents to clients to review.

2015-06-03 13:36:35

Alex

Same issue as Kat, Gary and Shobha, any fixes?

2015-04-02 11:31:38

Kat

Same issue as Gary and Shobha, any fixes?

2015-03-03 17:36:37

Gary

I have the same issue as Shobha Bentley. The print preview shows the comments, but when I print, no comments appear, only a grey column.

2015-02-12 18:20:26

Bruce

Thanks! For MS Word 2013 - Worked like I wanted. I can print all the markup and comments out by themselves.

thanks for posting.

2014-08-16 14:26:41

Shobha Bentley

I have tried to print the comments using the Print Mark Up option within Word 2013. It does not work. All I get is the comments area as a blank column next to the document text.

This Site

Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.