Comments are a useful tool when editing in Excel, especially if more than one user is working on the same worksheet. There are several settings you will want to adjust to make Comments work the best for you. The following articles discuss how to edit and view comments in Excel to achieve communication concerning specific pieces of data.

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Comments' topic. Click the article''s title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

   Adding a Comment to Multiple Cells
Adding a comment to a single cell is easy. What if you want to add the same comment to multiple cells, however? Here are some ideas on how you can accomplish this task.

   Anchoring Comment Boxes in Desired Locations
Want your comment boxes to appear someplace other than the right side of a cell? You may be out of luck, and here's why.

   Changing the Comment Color
Normally Excel displays comments in a color reminiscent of sticky notes you keep around your office. If you want them to use a different color, here's how to make the change.

   Comments Don't Appear when Cell is Pointed To
One way that you can view comments in a worksheet is to have them appear when you hover the mouse pointer over a cell. If they don't appear when they should, the information in this tip may help.

   Copying Comments to Cells
Need to copy whatever is in a comment into a cell on your worksheet? If you have lots of comments, manually doing this can be tedious. Here is a macro solution that will make quick work of the copying.

   Copying Comments when Filtering
The advanced filtering feature in Excel allows you to quickly copy unique information from one data list to another. If you want to copy the comments associated with that information, you are out of luck; advanced filtering won't do it. There are workarounds you can use to get the same result, however.

   Counting Comments in a Worksheet
Need to know how many comments are in a worksheet? You can figure out the count manually, or you can apply the handy macro presented in this tip.

   Editing a Comment Close to Its Cell
Have you ever chosen to edit a comment, only to find that the comment is quite a ways from the cell with which it is associated? Here's why that condition occurs and how to fix it.

   Editing Comments
Comments can be very helpful in a worksheet. After they are added, you may want to change what they contain. Here's how to make the edits you want.

   Filtering for Comments
Excel makes it easy to filter a data table based on various values in that table. It isn't so easy to filter according to whether a cell contains comments or not. Here's a few ways you can make the filtering easier.

   Finding and Replacing Text in Comments
Excel allows you to add comments to individual cells in your workbook. Unfortunately, Excel doesn't provide a way to search and replace text in those comments. You can do it with a macro, however.

   Formatting Text in Comment Boxes
Want to make your worksheet comments appear a certain way? It's easy to do using techniques you already are familiar with.

   Inserting Workbook Comments Into a Cell
One of the pieces of information that Excel can maintain relative to a workbook is a set of comments of your choice. There is no built-in way to copy these comments to a cell, but you can use a short macro to make short work of the need.

   Keyboard Shortcut for Comments
Adding comments to the cells in your worksheets can help to document different aspects of that worksheet. Adding a comment is easy enough, but you may want to make it even easier by using one of the shortcuts provided in this tip.

   Linking Comments to Multiple Cells
In Excel, single comments are associated with single cells. If you want to have a comment be linked to multiple cells, you'll need to use the workaround discussed here.

   Managing Comments
If you frequently add comments to cells in a worksheet, Excel provides a variety of tools you can use to manage those comments. This tip provides an overview of the tools provided.

   Moving Comment Background Pictures to Cells
When formatting comments, you can use a graphic as a background for the comment box. If you later want to move this graphic into the worksheet itself, the task can be difficult. The macro presented in this tip makes quick work of the task, however.

   Pasting a Comment into Your Worksheet
Excel allows you to not only put information into cells, but into comments attached to those cells. Here's how to copy the information from a comment into a cell, using techniques you are already familiar with.

   Placing Formula Results in a Comment
Excel won't allow you to directly or automatically insert the results of a formula into a cell's comment. You can, however, use a macro to place that result exactly where you want it.

   Printing Comments
Comments can be a boon when you want to annotate your worksheets. If you want, you can instruct Excel to print the comments right along with the worksheet itself. Here's how to instruct Excel to include them.

   Static Sizes for Comment Boxes
Adding comments to your worksheet can be helpful in documenting what the worksheet contains. If you want to make sure that your comment boxes are always the size you expect, you'll need to be careful with how you can Excel configured.

   Viewing Comments
There are three different ways that Excel allows you to display any comments that are in your worksheet. Here's how you can change the display method used.