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In a recent update, Microsoft added in a comment icon that automatically appears when highlighting text in Word. It is not a feature I need and want to turn it off. All online documentation says that unchecking "Enable Modern Comments" should remove this feature. I have done that and reset Word. It still does not remove that icon.
How do I get that icon to go away. It is so distracting.
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
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Second this. Incredibly annoying, right up there with the stupid Copilot icon. Does Microsoft ever ask its users what we want and don't want?
@BookAuthor,
Microsoft is not hearing about your problems from what you post here. You are discussing a problem with your fellow users here. We can give good advice about how to work with Word as it is and give suggestions for making it work properly.
Designers and their supervisors do see feedback. (You will almost certainly not get a direct response to that feedback but they do see it.)
Here is more about that:
I suggest using the public feedback portal so other users can see your feedback, comment and vote. If you want, you can post the URL of your feedback with your question here to lead others with the same problem to your feedback. Be the “squeaky wheel” that gets fixed!
Answer recommended by moderator
There is no solution at the user level. This is a design issue which needs to be addressed by Microsoft.
Use Help> Feedback to express your concern to the development group. Volume of Feedback is an influencing factor in having changes made to the software.
I encourage anyone concerned about this issue to use this link & upvote any postings which pertain to it on Windows or Mac: Word · Feedback Use the ⇧ in the upper left corner of each message.
There are more than a dozen but I found that as of 2/4/26 only one had been upvotes — and it had received only one vote. Complaining here accomplishes nothing but lengthening the thread. For anyone for whom the matter is something serious that is the place to go.