Have you ever wanted to copy and paste Microsoft Word comments into a new Word file in order to review them separately from the original document? Word doesn’t have an official method for copying and pasting comments. However, today’s tutorial shows the work-around I use to accomplish that task—without having to copy and paste each comment individually.
Important note: This method won’t copy the text connected to the comments or edits created with Track Changes. Visit “How to Copy and Paste Text with Comments and Track Changes in Microsoft Word” for directions on copying and pasting text with all comments and edits from one file to another.
Also note that this method only copies the comment text. It doesn’t include metadata such as the reviewer’s name or the date and time when the comments were written (which makes this method especially helpful if you want to review comments anonymously).
The images below are from Word for Office 365, which is currently the same as Word 2019. The steps are the same in Word 2016, Word 2013, and Word 2010.
Copy and Paste Comments into a New File
1. Select the Review tab.
2. Select the Display for Review menu arrow.
3. Select All Markup from the drop-down menu.
4. Select the Show Markup drop-down menu and ensure that Comments is selected with a check mark.
5. Select Balloons from the drop-down menu.
6. Select Show Only Comments and Formatting in Balloons from the secondary drop-down menu.
Optional Step: If you want to copy and paste comments from a specific reviewer or reviewers, select Specific People and then select the name or names from the available options. The default is All Reviewers.
7. Select all the comment text in the first balloon.
(Note: The comment text must be selected in the balloons rather than the Review Pane because you can’t simultaneously copy multiple comments from the Review Pane.)
8. Select Ctrl + Shift + End to select all the comments in the other balloons.
9. Select Ctrl + C to copy all the comments. Alternately, you can right-click on any of the selected comments and then select Copy.
10. Open a new Word file or an existing Word file where you would like to paste the comments.
11. Insert your cursor into the newly opened file and select Ctrl + V to paste all the comments. Alternately, you can right-click in the newly opened file and then select Paste.
Further Reading:
How to Use Track Changes in Microsoft Word
How to Change Your User Name for Track Changes in Microsoft Word
How to Remove User Names from Existing Track Changes in Microsoft Word
I was looking for this process for so long! I went through a lot of different ways and approaches to make this happen but none of the procedures really worked for it. I saw this in practice and always wanted to know the whole dilemma behind it. Thanks to you my quest finally ended here!
Great, I am glad it worked for you. Thank you for stopping by!
Thank you so much for this tip- it saved a lot of time!
Is there any reason you could think of why this method may stop working for some reason? I was able to copy and paste comments from several documents yesterday, but today when I try ctrl +shift+end nothing happens- I’m brought to the end of the document but none of the comment balloons are highlighted. Thought I would check in in case its something glaringly obvious (I’m not the savviest with this sort of thing ;). Thanks again!
Thank you for reading my post! I just checked this method on my own laptop (which had a Windows update yesterday) and it still works, so I’m afraid I don’t have any specific advice for you. If I encounter a solution, I will be sure to post an update here.
Hi Erin
Thanks for this, but I get stuck at the control>shift>end stage. It won’t highlight my other 97 comments. Maybe it’s because I’m using Word 2010 on a laptop?
Hi, Jeni. Thank you for reading my post. I suspect your issue might be related to your End key because a quick look through the Microsoft support forum shows that many people have trouble with the End key on various keyboards. One person said they could get the key to work by pressing the Function (Fn) key with it–that might be worth a try. Best of luck!
Thank you!
Thank you for reading my post!
Thank you from a fellow editor. Super simple solution to my problem!
Thank you for stopping by!
This is brilliant! I’ve been open-coding qualitative interview transcripts using Word Comments and this allowed me to copy all of my codes to add to my dictionary!
Excellent! I’m so glad to hear that. Thank you for stopping by!
~Erin