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How to Copy and Paste Comments into a New File in Microsoft Word

By Erin Wright 18 Comments

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.

Review tab in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 1. Review tab

2. Select the Display for Review menu arrow.

Display for Review menu arrow in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 2. Display for Review menu arrow

3. Select All Markup from the drop-down menu.

All Markup display option in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 3. All Markup display option

4. Select the Show Markup drop-down menu and ensure that Comments is selected with a check mark.

Show Markup menu in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 4. Show Markup menu

5. Select Balloons from the drop-down menu.

Show Markup Balloon option in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 5. Balloon display option

6. Select Show Only Comments and Formatting in Balloons from the secondary drop-down menu.

Show Only Comments and Formatting in Balloons option in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 6. Show Only Comments and Formatting in Balloons option

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.

Show Markup for Specific People option in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 7. Specific People option

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.)

Text selected in first comment balloon in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 8. Text selected in the first comment balloon

8. Select Ctrl + Shift + End to select all the comments in the other balloons.

Text selected in all comment balloons in Word 2019 / Word 365
Figure 9. Text selected in all the comment 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

18 Comments Filed Under: Microsoft Word Tagged With: Track Changes, Word 2010, Word 2013, Word 2016, Word 2019, Word 365

Home » How to Copy and Paste Comments into a New File in Microsoft Word

Meet the Author

Technical Writer and Editor Erin WrightHello! My name is Erin. I am a technical writer and editor who shares step-by-step software tutorials and writing tips for the real world on this blog and YouTube

You can also connect with me on Facebook and Twitter.

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Comments

  1. ByteScout says

    April 9, 2019 at 10:17 am

    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!

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      April 11, 2019 at 8:11 am

      Great, I am glad it worked for you. Thank you for stopping by!

      Reply
  2. J Roberts says

    June 12, 2019 at 3:21 pm

    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!

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      June 13, 2019 at 7:36 am

      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.

      Reply
  3. Jeni Lewington says

    September 22, 2019 at 9:54 pm

    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?

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      September 24, 2019 at 7:53 am

      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!

      Reply
  4. Brian says

    September 24, 2019 at 9:57 pm

    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      September 25, 2019 at 7:51 am

      Thank you for reading my post!

      Reply
  5. Olivia Gontarz says

    December 23, 2019 at 4:46 pm

    Thank you from a fellow editor. Super simple solution to my problem!

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      December 23, 2019 at 6:27 pm

      Thank you for stopping by!

      Reply
  6. Erin Week says

    September 4, 2020 at 9:16 am

    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!

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      September 4, 2020 at 1:27 pm

      Excellent! I’m so glad to hear that. Thank you for stopping by!

      ~Erin

      Reply
  7. sahar says

    February 7, 2021 at 4:43 am

    Hello and thank you very much for your help.

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      February 8, 2021 at 11:02 am

      Thank you for visiting!

      Reply
  8. Taiseer says

    February 15, 2021 at 10:51 pm

    Thank you so much Erin. This is really great!!

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      February 16, 2021 at 2:49 pm

      Thank you for visiting!

      Reply
  9. Alon says

    March 25, 2021 at 6:31 am

    Hey Erin,
    this technique works great if you want to simply copy and paste the comments into a regular written word format
    .
    is there a way to copy and paste comments from one document into another, in such a way that they still show up as comment-balloons in the same page numbers as the original file?

    Reply
    • Erin Wright says

      March 25, 2021 at 10:29 am

      Hello, thank you for visiting my blog. Yes, you can copy and paste comments from one document to another. Here is a tutorial I wrote on that topic: https://erinwrightwriting.com/copy-and-paste-text-with-comments-and-track-changes-in-word/. Best of luck!

      ~Erin

      Reply

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