Managing Comments

Besides simply adding and viewing comments one at a time, Excel includes some tools that allow you to easily manage your comments. The tools available to you depend on the version of Excel you are using. If you are using a version of Excel prior to Excel 2007, you use the Reviewing toolbar. If you are using Excel 2007 then you use the Review tab of the ribbon. If you have quite a few comments in your worksheet, these tools can be a great help.

Displaying the Review tab of the ribbon is easy—just click on it. In older versions of Excel you can display the Reviewing toolbar by choosing Comments from the View menu or by choosing Toolbars from the View menu and then choose Reviewing from the list of available toolbars.

The buttons on the Reviewing toolbar or on the Review tab of the ribbon make it very easy to work with the comments. For instance, you can add a comment to a cell by clicking your mouse on the New Comment tool.

Perhaps the most helpful tools are the Previous Comment and Next Comment tools. These allow you to work strictly with comments and jump from one to the other. As you click your mouse on one of these tools, Excel highlights a comment. The New Comment tool changes to Edit Comment, and you can use the Hide Comment tool to dismiss the comment and the Delete Comment tool to permanently remove it.

When you are done working with comments, you will want to click on the Hide All Comments tool and then close the Reviewing toolbar.