Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 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: Copying, Moving, and Deleting Comments.

Copying, Moving, and Deleting Notes and Comments

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated July 27, 2024)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365


1

If you previously inserted comments or notes into your document and you want to copy, move, or delete one of them, you can use techniques you already know for editing regular text. The trick is to do your work in Draft mode. (That's why all the steps in this tip start with that instruction—make sure you are viewing the document in Draft view.) You can view your document in Draft mode by displaying the View tab of the ribbon and clicking the Draft tool at the left. You do the work in Draft mode because that allows you to see what are referred to as "comment marks." These denote where a comment or note is located. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. An example of a comment mark, shown here as [AW2].

To copy a note or comment, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you are viewing your document in Draft view.
  2. Select the comment mark in your document.
  3. Press Ctrl+C. The comment mark and the associated comment are copied to the Clipboard.
  4. Position the insertion point at the location where you want to copy the comment.
  5. Press Ctrl+V. The comment mark is inserted in your document, and the associated comment is added to your document.

You'll note that when you past the comment mark at the new location (step 5), there is no text selected to which the comment or note applies. In other words, the comment or note is inserted, but no text is highlighted and associated with the comment or note.

If you want to move a comment or note to another location in your document (or even to another document), you can use techniques you already know for moving regular text. To move a comment or note, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you are viewing your document in Draft view.
  2. Select the comment mark for the comment you want to move.
  3. Press Ctrl+X. The comment mark and the associated comment are removed from your document and copied to the Clipboard.
  4. Position the insertion point at the location where you want the comment moved.
  5. Press Ctrl+V. The comment mark is inserted in your document, and the associated comment is again added to the document.

To remove a comment or note from your document, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you are viewing your document in Draft view.
  2. Select the comment mark in your document.
  3. Press either Del or Ctrl+X.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10021) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Copying, Moving, and Deleting 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. ...

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Comments

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What is one minus 0?

2024-09-09 15:36:35

Tiffany Terry

Oh thank you! I knew there had to be a way to move a comment! I really wanted to save the final document with comments as a pdf, but couldn't get the first comment to print, and needed to move them around to do some testing. Apparently, if someone adds a comment before the very first character of the document so that IT is now the very first character, you have to add a single blank space before it in order for that first comment to print. (I purposefully put a blank line at the top for people to add their general, rather than content-specific, comments and drove myself crazy trying to figure out why, when a lady added two comments there, I could see both on the screen but only her second one would print.)


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