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I do a lot of editing as well as providing feedback to students as a teacher. I need to be able to scan through all of the comments I've made quickly to get a sense of what I've written and check I'm not repeating myself. This used to be possible with all comments appearing in a column to the right of my document, but this feature suddenly disappeared a couple of days ago with no warning. I can't find any option in the menus or any help documents to show me how to make this reappear. All I can see is each individual comment bubble icon which I have to click on to see the relevant comment - this takes too long, and involves too much clicking (not good when using a mouse all day!)
The reviewing pane doesn't work, as I can't see the comments in context - I have to click multiple times to be able to see comments with the context to show me why I wrote them.
[I've tried to add screenshots but they don't seem to be showing in this post, even though it says 'image inserted successfully']
My search shows that I probably am asking for the Classic Comments experience and that this has been replaced by Modern Comments. Is there a way to go back to the classic experience?
Word version: Microsoft® Word 2019 MSO (Version 2404 Build 16.0.17531.20140) 64-bit
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
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.
On the Review tab of the ribbon, access the Show Markup dropdown and then click on the > to the right of Balloons and select the "Show Only Comments and Formatting in Balloons"
You should be able to turn off modern comments by clearing that option at File > Options > General. As you have found, a restart of Word is required. (Not all versions of Word has this option, though.)
You can then choose to display comment balloons in the Markup area in Word, as Doug said in his reply.
Copying into a new document could potentially tell us if the issue is caused by some (damaged) setting inside the document itself.
It isn't necessarily a permanent fix, but rather a possible troubleshooting step.
If you see the options shown in Doug's screen shot, you already have the classic comments.
Make sure that only one document is open in Word and then do the following:
Choose the All Markup view in the Display for Review drop down, click Show Markup > Balloons > Show Only Comments and Formatting in Balloons.
Exit and restart Word. This saves the changes to the Windows registry.
The option should now be sticky.
Unfortunately that option doesn't appear in my version of Word.
Instead I have to click a couple of options in the menu Doug mentioned, finishing on 'Show only comments and formatting in balloons', then close the document and open it again. Every document requires me to do this, which is pretty annoying, though at least I can see the comments in the sidebar properly now!