The team at Holly's company uses comments as they are developing documents. Some of the very long documents can have hundreds of comments, and all of the comments need to be resolved before publication. Holly wonders if there is a way to jump to the first unresolved comment in a document, bypassing all of the comments that were previously resolved.
Yes, there is an easy way to do this. How you do it, though, depends on how you are displaying comments on the screen. You see, there are two ways you can display them: Contextual and List. You can see which display method you are using by displaying the Review tab of the ribbon and then, in the Comments group, clicking the down-arrow next to the Show Comments tool.
By default, Contextual is the way that Word displays the comments. This shows comment balloons at the right of your document. If a comment has been marked as resolved, then it won't show up anymore. Clicking on Next or Previous in the Comments group of the Review tab of the ribbon will skip right over those resolved comments.
If you are using List as your method of displaying comments, then Word displays the Comments pane at the right side of the screen and lists every comment within the document, regardless of whether it has been resolved or not. In this display method, you can hide the resolved comments by following these steps:
The result is that Word only lists the unresolved comments in the Comments pane. You can then click the desired comment within the Comments pane.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (13988) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, 2024, and Word in Microsoft 365.
Create Custom Apps with VBA! Discover how to extend the capabilities of Office 365 applications with VBA programming. Written in clear terms and understandable language, the book includes systematic tutorials and contains both intermediate and advanced content for experienced VB developers. Designed to be comprehensive, the book addresses not just one Office application, but the entire Office suite. Check out Mastering VBA for Microsoft Office 365 today!
For certain types of work, footnotes are a necessity. Word provides an easy way to create new footnotes, but what about ...
Discover MoreWhen you add a comment to a document, Word helpfully includes the date and time that the comment was added. If you don't ...
Discover MoreWant your comments to stand out a bit more than normal or, to the contrary, to be minimized? You can affect how comments ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
2026-07-25 09:19:59
Arvilla Trag
Hi Allen,
I typically have a lot of comments in the documents I work with, so I was very pleased to see this tip. The problem I have is there is no place to click for a "filter" in the upper right corner of the comments pane. What am I missing?
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.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2026 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments