Making notes on the side of a word document

You can insert comments and display them in balloons. To insert a comment, select the Review tab; in the Comments group, click New Comment. The comment will appear in a marginal balloon unless you have the Reviewing Pane displayed. You can change settings for comments and other markup by clicking the arrow in the bottom right corner of the Tracking group; clicking Advanced Options... in the Track Changes Options dialog will open a dialog where you can choose whether you want the balloons on the left or right, whether you want lines connecting them, how much space to allow for them, etc.

Sorry for the slow response; my Internet connection was down for 18 hours. It is not possible to remove the author's name, but you can change it. I wouldn't advise this as a permanent setting, but while you are working on this specific document, you can go to File | Options | General and change the "User name" to just a space. This works in Word 2013; I'm not sure how it might affect a Microsoft 365 account (though I see that my user name and account name are different).

thank you

Is there a way of eliminating the author's name from each of the New Commentbubbles as each note is made by me?  It would save some space for notes.  I am not tracking changes. 

Thanks