Good feedback is specific. A comment pinned to the exact sentence you're talking about is clearer than any email, and adding one from the keyboard keeps your review moving.
Step by step
- Select the text you want to comment on, or place the cursor next to it.
- Press Ctrl+Alt+M. A comment box opens in the margin.
- Type your comment and post it.
Tips & troubleshooting
- Pair comments with Track Changes (Ctrl+Shift+E) so reviewers see both your edits and your reasons.
- Ctrl+Alt+M also inserts a comment in PowerPoint.
Working with comments
- Post it: press Ctrl+Enter when you've finished typing. In current versions a comment isn't visible to others until it's posted.
- Reply: click Reply in the comment to keep the discussion in one thread.
- Mention someone: type @ and a name in a document stored on OneDrive or SharePoint. They get an email with a link to the comment.
- Resolve: use the three-dot menu on a thread and choose Resolve thread. It is greyed out but kept as a record.
- Move between them: Next and Previous in the Comments group on the Review tab.
- Delete: Review, Delete removes the selected comment; the arrow beside it offers Delete All Comments in Document.
Comment or tracked change?
Use a tracked change when you know what the text should say: make the edit and let the author accept or reject it. Use a comment when you have a question, a suggestion that needs a decision, or an explanation of why you changed something. A document returned with twenty comments saying consider rewording is far more work for the author than twenty tracked rewordings.
Writing comments people can act on
- Select only the words you mean, not the whole paragraph.
- Say what you want done: Add the Q3 figure here is better than Figures?
- One point per comment, so each can be resolved separately.
- Remember that comments stay in the file and may be read by anyone it is forwarded to.
Printing and sending
Comments print by default. To leave them out, go to File, Print, open the first list under Settings and untick Print Markup. Before sending a final version outside your organisation, delete all comments and run File, Info, Check for Issues, Inspect Document.
In Word for Mac the shortcut is Cmd+Option+A.