I don't use comments extensively, so my memory on this point is a bit hazy,
but I don't remember the built-in Insert Comment feature of any version of
Word since before Office 2000 that supported in-line comments.
Do you know that you can set the width of the column for the balloons? It's
at the bottom of the Track Changes Options dialog (click the down arrow on
the Track Changes button and select Change Tracking Options). If the
comments are short, you could set the balloon width to 1" or 1.5".
If you want to use the Hidden font attribute instead, it would be quicker to
use if you define a character style consisting of Default Paragraph Font +
Hidden and put that on the Quick Styles gallery and/or assign a keyboard
shortcut to it.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:
http://word.mvps.org
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John Fenton wrote:
Thanks Jay.
It is very unfortunate that MS has decided that what once was the
standard behavior is now no longer even possible. There are many
good reasons to still allow the inline comment to show the entire
comment WHEN you need a commented document and not show at all for
the official document. The way comments print now forces your entire
document to become microscopic when printed in order to cram the big
stupid balloons onto the page.
For a company that believes in providing as many was as possible to
do the same thing, this is one they missed the boat on and forces the
end user to have to become a scripter just to get everyday work done.
My end users don't want to become programmers, they just want to be
able to get their work done.
For anyone interested in a solution albeit kludgy and unfortunate, we
are using the hidden text feature available in the FONT properties.
I'm not a programmer by trade but if anyone can give me a few clues
where to start in reprogramming the COMMENT feature of Word 2007,
I'll take a shot at fixing Word so it's not locked down like a cell
phone.
Jay, if you have any contacts, please pass the word back to MS that
inline comments need to have some options added back in apparently
removed by the formatting police.
Thank you again for confirming what I suspected.
I need to be able to create comments that will print inline
completely and not just my initials. I cannot find anything in the
options or the help files that tell me how to do this. Currently,
the only way to actually print the comments is as balloons off to
the side and I need them inline. Thanks for your help and time!
John
For this requirement, you can't use Words built-in Comments feature
-- it just
doesn't work that way.
Define a character style, including some formatting (color,
background, etc.)
that will distinguish it from regular text. To make an "inline
comment", just
type the comment in place and then apply the character style to it
(you can
define a keyboard shortcut or toolbar button to apply the style). If
you want to
include your initials, a time stamp, or anything else, you'll have
to type that
as well.
If this is something you expect to do a lot, a macro could make it a
one-click
operation.