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Some comments not appearing in contextual view, but appear in list view.

Anonymous
2024-09-21T00:50:47+00:00

Greetings,

Since the last update (currently running MS Word Version 2408 (Build 17928.20156), some of the comments that I make in Word documents do not appear in contextual view, even though they appear in list view. I am not able to click on them in the text and have the comment appear in contextual view. After I make some comments, they disappear and are only available in list view. I am working on an important paper for the top medical journal in the world, and it is debilitating as an editor to not be able to make comments. This document is shared with 20 people. It has also happened in another document that I am working on for another client (in this document, it happened before the document was shared).

I called support. They cannot help and claim that it is not a Microsoft issue. I have copied and pasted the text with the broken comments into a new document and the problem still occurs. Saved the document to my PC (instead of OneDrive) and the problem still occurs. I have accessed the document on another computer and the problem still occurs.

I am beyond frustrated. My colleagues, global leaders in their fields, are mainly older and are technologically challenged. They will not understand if I tell them to look at the comments in list view instead of contextual view. Essential comments will be missed. I just need it to work properly. I am beyond frustrated.

Any advice is most appreciated!

Thanks

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For business | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-09-22T18:20:21+00:00

    Thanks for this suggestion. Although Microsoft tried to tell me that this issue was isolated to me, my computers, my SharePoint, and my OneDrive, I know that others must be experiencing this glitch.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-10-22T11:20:40+00:00

    I have the same problem.

    Certain comments are only shown in list view, or when I hold the cursor over the text where the comment is made. Copying the text to a new document resolved the problem. However, this is not because my document was corrupted.

    Here's the reason why, in my case, certain comments were only shown in list view.

    Like and earlier post mentioned, the problem occurs when there are comments added to text with other tracked changes. In my case, the adding of a comment by another user unintentionally also caused a formatting change. Hence the text had both a comment and a format change. When copying the text to a new document, the format change tracking was lost (not sure why), and the comment is shown. Similarly, the comment will also show in the original document when turning off "Formating" under the "Show Markup" banner.

    This can easily be reproduced by typing some text, make a formatting change to one word, and add a comment to the same word. A soon as you submit the comment it "disappears" - although it can be found in the list view. Note that other changes to the text, like spelling etc, does not cause the problem.

    To me this looks like a bug. Surely it should be possible to view both a formatting change and comment linked to the same text.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-10-04T17:50:54+00:00

    For those of you who experienced this issue....

    By any chance, did you highlight tracked changed text when you had the issue? I did when I had the problem. When I copied the comment text, and added a new comment shading other tracked change text, I still had the issue. Then when I highlighted non-tracked change text, it worked O.K. But that could just be a coincidence.

    Thanks,

    TB

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-10-02T16:01:29+00:00

    I'm having the same exact issue. Has this been resolved - or is there at least a temporary workaround beyond copying and pasting into a new document?

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-09-22T18:18:18+00:00

    It only happens to maybe every 20th comment or so. I am not able to upload screenshots as the paper has not even been submitted. This is how it goes: I make a comment (using any method of inserting comments) and in the second or less that it usually takes for the comment to post, it vanishes. The vanished comments are only in list view and not contextual view. If I were to take a screenshot and hover over the selected text associated with the comment, it would be grey and not pink and no associated comment would appear in contextual view. The comment does then appear when I select the text in list view.

    I do not have balloons selected for mark-ups. This is about comments, not all changes/mark-ups made to the document. The document becomes too cluttered to work with because, as an editor, I make thousands of changes.

    Disabling modern comments had no effect.

    Thanks for the suggestion about new documents. Yes, this occurred in a new document the other day.

    Best,

    Jenn

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