Share via

Make comments display in PDF

Anonymous
2016-02-21T15:12:51+00:00

Here's what I want. I want to mark up a Microsoft Word document with comment balloons, then save it as a PDF and have the balloons show in the PDF. I can find all sorts of postings saying how to turn the comment balloons OFF when saving something to PDF, but I want the opposite.

I did this successfully a couple of times, a few weeks ago, but apparently I changed something on my Word settings, because now when I put the comment balloons on a Word document and save it to PDF, all the comments are closed and not readable. I want a very simple thing: I want all the comment balloons open and readable when people open the PDF. Anyone who can figure out what I did wrong to make them closed and not readable, and can point me to how to reverse my mistake, will win my undying gratitude.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments
Answer accepted by question author
  1. Stefan Blom 338.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-02-24T10:09:08+00:00

    Just to be clear, you are using the desktop version (= the locally installed version) of Word and not Office online? I believe that Word online never prints comments.

    In the desktop version, when comments are hidden or truncated, the reason is usually that there are too many comments on the same page so that Word can't display them all. You can try increasing the "Preferred width" in the Advanced Track Changes dialog box.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments

3 additional answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2016-02-23T14:54:18+00:00

    This should be possible with printing a PDF instead of "Save as...".

    Set up your PDF printer accordingly and there you go.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2016-02-22T08:24:01+00:00

    Hello Doyle,

    Welcome to Microsoft Community.

    Once the comments are inserted in Word file and when attempting to save the Word document as PDF type, in the Save As dialog box, click on the settings below and choose what to publish as "Document Showing Markup" and then save to see the changes in your PDF file

    Hope this helps. If you have any queries, do let us know.

    Thank you.

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2016-02-23T01:48:08+00:00

    Near as I can tell, the only thing that toggles on and off is whether the balloons show at all. My problem is that the balloons do show, but they're collapsed and don't display their contents. They only show my initials. I want to find a way to save documents to PDF with the comment balloons fully open and displaying their contents.

    0 comments