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

Deleting All Comments

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated December 5, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021

When writing and editing a document, it is not uncommon to add comments throughout the document. This is particularly true if you are writing a "team" document, where several people have responsibility for different parts of the document.

When you are through working on the document, you may want a way to get rid of all the comments at once. One easy way to do this is to follow these steps:

Make sure the Review tab of the ribbon is displayed.
Click the down-arrow next to or below (depending on which version of Word you are using) the Delete button in the Comments group. Word displays a drop-down list of options. (Even though the Delete button may look like it is not available, the down-arrow is active as long as there is one comment in the document.)
Choose the Delete All Comments in Document option.

Depending on how complex the comments are in your document, the above approach may not get rid of all the comments. This is particularly true if you have Track Changes turned on, and the document has gone through much iteration with lots of comments, some with Track Changes in place and some not. If you discover problems, or if you routinely have many, many comments to delete, you may want to consider creating a very short macro to get rid of comments. The following macro will delete all the comments in a document:

Sub RemoveComments2()
    ActiveDocument.DeleteAllComments
End Sub

Note:

If you would like to know how to use the macros described on this page (or on any other page on the WordTips sites), I've prepared a special page that includes helpful information. Click here to open that special page in a new browser tab.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11740) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Deleting All 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...

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