How to sequentially number comments in Word 365

Question

I want to number my review comments sequentially that I add to Word documents (as I have done for years in the previous Word program). How do you do this in Word 365?

Answer 1

1. In Word for Windows, choose File>Options>General and uncheck Enable modern comments.
2. Then, on the Home tab, open the Styles Pane (Alt + Ctrl + Shift + s).
3. Click on the Options button and set the Select styles to show dropdown to All styles. OK out.
4. Back in the Style Pane, find the Comment Text style. Hover your mouse over the right end of the style name, then click on the down-pointing arrowhead that appears and choose Modify. The Modify Style dialog appears.
5. Check the New Documents based on this template option, to make sure that future documents include numbered comments.
6. Click on Format>Numbering and choose a numbering style for your comments. OK out.

In testing here, this adds numbers to each new comment, but does not add numbers to old comments.

Answer 2

Doug Robbins has created the macro below which can be used to add numbering even to modern comments. You can run the macro multiple times and in fact it must be run after you have added more comments to a document, so that the comments renumber properly.

Sub NumberComments()
'Created by Doug Robbins, MVP
Dim i As Long

Dim rngComment As Range

With ActiveDocument

    For i = 1 To .Comments.Count

        Set rngComment = .Comments(i).Range
        With rngComment
            If Left(.Text, 7) = "Comment" Then
                .Text = "Comment " & i & " " & Mid(.Text, InStr(.Text, "-"))

            Else

                .Text = "Comment " & i & " - " & .Text

            End If

        End With

    Next i

End With
End Sub