Adding a Comment to Multiple Cells

Keith notes that adding a comment to a cell is easy. He wonders if there is a way to insert the same comment into multiple cells at the same time.

The short answer is that there is no way to insert multiple comments at the same time. You can, however, copy a comment to multiple cells. Follow these steps:

1. Insert your comment in the first cell, as you normally would.
2. Select the commented cell and press Ctrl+C. This copies the cell to the Clipboard.
3. Select the range of cells that you want to have the same comment.
4. Select Paste Special from the Edit menu. Excel displays the Paste Special dialog box. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Paste Special dialog box.

5. Click the Comments radio button.
6. Click OK.

The result is that only the comment from the cell in step 2 is pasted to the cells you selected in step 3. If any of those cells already had comments, those comments are replaced with the one you are pasting.

If you really want to add the comment to all the cells at the same time, then the only way to do it is through a macro. The following example will prompt you for a comment and then add the comment to all the cells you've selected.

Sub InsertCommentsSelection()
    Dim sCmt As String
    Dim rCell As Range

    sCmt = InputBox( _
      Prompt:="Enter Comment to Add" & vbCrLf & _
      "Comment will be added to all cells in Selection", _
      Title:="Comment to Add")
    If sCmt = "" Then
        MsgBox "No comment added"
    Else
        For Each rCell In Selection
            With rCell
                .ClearComments
                .AddComment
                .Comment.Text Text:=sCmt
            End With
        Next
    End If
    Set rCell = Nothing
End Sub

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3521) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Adding a Comment to Multiple Cells.