How to use comments to collaborate on Microsoft Word documents

With the increased demand for workplace collaboration, Microsoft Word expanded to enable comments for the exchange of notes and ideas to facilitate editing and sharing reviews.

With this, there is a more effective Word collaboration experience for you and the rest of the team using modern features such as the @mention notifications and a few more. It was first introduced to the web app version of Word but now is available in Word for Windows and MacOS!

Here are a few features to take note of while using this Word experience;

1. Explore your view of comments

Comments are shown to the right of the page by default. You can focus on your content without missing active comments related to what is being worked on in the document.

• Resolve comments.

When you select the option to resolve comments they are moved to the Comments pane. You can always check and find them there later.

• Access Comments pane.

To cross from the default, focused view of comments to the right of the page and the Comments pane, select the Comments button in the upper right corner of your Word window. This is called this the “Collab corner”

• Engage others.

Comments will be seen by others after you’ve finished editing them and have clicked the Post button. Others can be brought into the conversation using @mention. Notifications of comment thread updates will automatically be sent to any user that you mentioned.

How this works, step by step;

1. Create a document thread by selecting the text you want to comment on and clicking Ctrl+Alt+M.
2. Type the comment then click Post.
3. Select any comment in the document to put it into focus and highlight the content it is referencing.

• Reply to a comment thread with an @mention by clicking the box that shows “@mention or reply” to reply to an existing comment. Type @ and the name of the person who you want to engage then click Post to complete the reply.
• To resolve a comment thread, select “…” on any comment thread, and then select Resolve thread to mark it as complete. If there is a need to review the resolved comments, later on, click the Comments button in the right corner of the Word window to access the Comments pane.

Are you looking for an even better way to collaborate while using Microsoft Word?

Simul Docs is one of the best collaboration tools on the market that knows that when a team is collaborating on a document, tracking changes is paramount. Without this, there is no way for multiple users to know who made what changes and at what point. Word does have a Tracked Changesfeature and it is great when you remember to turn it on but sometimes we forget to do so and it gets frustrating because one can go on making changes that they won’t be able to remember only to notice this later on. You can try to re-read through the pages but often, not all of them can be identified.

Besides this, another user can join the document editing process without your knowledge, make changes and they won’t be tracked because the Tracked Changesfeature isn’t on. This can have grave consequences in case the changes go unnoticed or unreviewed.

Using Simul Docs, one is able to track and save changes automatically. Every single time. It has an inbuilt automatic track changes feature that facilitates collaboration, live in the document at any time even when you forget that it is doing so. Thereafter, they can be reviewed and declined depending on one’s preference to perfect the text. There is no need to go back and forth trying to remember what has been changed.

Each change made and comment suggested will have an accept or decline button situated next to it similar to what can be seen in Microsoft’s track changes feature.

The rest of the team working on the document can also leave comments and notes to provide additional information and give feedback. These notes can be exchanged in the comment thread. A conversation can be held to maintain these updates on what is to be done and altered, live in the document.

Once you have finished collaborating and making changes, when you are ready to save and send the document, Simuloffers all the features needed to share via whichever tool or source that is preferable.

Save your document as a word file or PDF, that’s easy.

Share it via a direct link, email or a cloud system such as GoogleDrive, OneDrive, Dropbox and more.

Work with Simul Docsand be sure to enjoy cool features that truly make collaborating easy. Easy collaboration is addictive. Once you’ve tried it you’ll never go back.