Share via

Change comment colours in Word

Anonymous
2022-04-07T12:03:42+00:00

Hi

How do I change the colour of comments in Word? The option for this must have changed recently, as I can no longer use the following instructions, which have worked for me before: https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/word/5461-word-change-comment-color.html

I no longer have any options for comment colours.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | 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

8 answers

Sort by: Most helpful
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2022-04-07T21:07:53+00:00

    Aha! Thanks for the info. I went into General settings and disabled modern comments. Now I get up the option to change comment colours again.

    There's an info box in the setting menu stating that the option to disable modern comments is temporary and will be removed in the future. I hope this doesn't mean we will no longer be able to choose comment colours.

    10+ people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2022-04-07T12:44:07+00:00

    Hi, and thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I don't have that option anymore (Office 365 for enterprise):

    9 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2022-04-07T23:46:27+00:00

    There's an info box in the setting menu stating that the option to disable modern comments is temporary and will be removed in the future. I hope this doesn't mean we will no longer be able to choose comment colours.

    I very much suspect that when modern comments become the only comments, the choice of colors will be omitted "by design".

    As Stefan mentioned, you'll still be able to change the text color by modifying the Comment Text style.

    However, you probably won't be able to have different colors for different reviewers, which the old comments permitted by selecting "By Author" in the dropdown in the Track Changes Options dialog. (Even there, you couldn't specify which colors to use or force them to be associated permanently with specific reviewers, and the colors Word selected were mostly ugly and hard to read. Instead of improving things, though, MS designers chose to remove the feature.)

    7 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  4. Stefan Blom 338.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-04-07T17:36:33+00:00

    You are seeing the "modern" comments. After you have typed content in the comment box, press Ctrl+Enter to post it.

    Note that if you switch to print preview (File > Print), Word will display the comments in the traditional way. They will also print traditionally. (And you can still modify the Comment Text and Balloon Text styles to affect what is shown in a printout or in a converted PDF.)

    6 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments
  5. Stefan Blom 338.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2022-04-07T23:31:13+00:00

    Thanks for the update. You have solved a mystery, at least for me.

    I wasn't aware that turning off the "modern" comments would affect the presence of a color option for comments. The connection is confusing.

    The perpetual license of Word (2021) that I usually run doesn't have modern comments, and therefore I didn't see the symptoms you described.

    I suggest that you post feedback for Microsoft via the File > Feedback > Send a Frown option in Word.

    3 people found this answer helpful.
    0 comments