Let's take a look at how we can input and edit comments and notes in Excel.
First off, what's a comment?
What's a note?
Well, you see this little tiny red icon attached to this cell here.
This is an Excel note.
It's a way of providing more information about what this cell means.
So here I've just written a simple note, input total sales by region.
There is another note here.
Double check this value. Another way I could do this is to type in text here and type in text here but
that's not something maybe I want to do in my file.
I'd rather hide those texts as Excel notes.
Now here's something you need to be aware of
and that's the difference between Excel notes and Excel comments.
If you don't have Office 365.
So you have Excel 2010, 13, 16, or 19.
You're not going to have these type of comments, you're just going to have the standard Excel notes.
In your version of Excel.
These are not going to be called notes.
Instead they're going to be called Excel comments.
So that's something that is gonna be a bit confusing because what Microsoft did is that they renamed
their old Excel comments which is basically these, they have been around for a long time.
They've renamed them in Office 365 to excel notes. Then they introduced a new note feature or comment feature
which they called Excel comments and they look a bit different.
So notice the icon is a bit different and the comment itself it's also different. And there is something
that's specific about this and that's you can reply to existing comments. So you can have actual conversations
here which we couldn't do with the old comments. So the old comments are kind of like a little post it
note where you just jot down more information about a cell. Whereas the new comments can be used for
collaboration.
So just like in a Word document when you're reviewing something you can see the entire conversation.
You can do that now with the new Excel comments.
So here I have added a comment.
This number appears incorrect.
Please update it before printing and Chris replied, It's been updated to this number now.
I can also reply back to him.
Okay.
So now that we have an overview of what a comment is, let's see how we can input a comment or a note
and how we can edit or respond to comments.
So first off let's start with notes. To input a new Excel note
we just have to right mouse click and select new note.
So now if you don't have Office 365, you need to select new comment instead because you're not going
to have these two you're just going to have one option called new comment.
In my case I have Office 365,
so I'm going to select new note. Automatically it shows my name here and I can just type down a comment.
Once I'm done with my comment
I just need to click away and it's there. When I go or hover over the cell
I can see that comment. To edit the note I just have to right
mouse click and select edit note. If I want to delete it, delete note. The show and hide
note basically keeps it visible even when I'm away so it's basically a toggle. When I click it once it's
going to show it.
If I'd go back there and select it again, it's going to hide it.
So it's only going to show it if I hover over the cell or if I'm inside the cell.
The shortcut key to insert or edit a note is shift+F2.
So if I wanted to add something I can just start typing and then click away and my note is there.
So to insert a new note you can also use the shortcut key Shift+F2. So just go to a cell, press Shift+F2
and you already can start typing. The options for handling notes in the menu are in the review tab.
They're all sitting right here.
Let's just go and quickly check what we have.
We can show all notes in the workbook.
This is a toggle
so if I click it again all of the notes are hidden.
We can also convert these to comments if we want it.
Right.
If you have Office 365 and you have some notes that are better off being a conversation you can
click on this and they're all going to be converted to comments like this.
But just remember, once you convert it to a comment you can't convert it back to a note.
And if you share your file with someone who doesn't have Office 365, they can't respond to your comments.
If I wanted to delete the notes that I have here I just have to highlight these cells, right mouse click
and select delete note or do it from the menu.
How about formatting the notes.
So let's see what options we have here.
Let's right mouse click, go to edit notes, click on the note box here then right mouse click and select
format comment.
So notice here Microsoft hasn't updated this to say format
note yet, it still says format comment.
Here you have different formatting options.
This is the standard color of a note.
You can change the color if you want by clicking on this dropdown and selecting another color.
You can change the transparency, you can change alignment, font, margins, and so on.
Once you're done you can click on OK and your changes are going to apply to that comment.
Can we copy and note? So let's say
I wanted this note to also be applicable for this.
Can I copy and paste it here?
I can do it really easily by copying the cell coming to these cell where I want the note. Then right
mouse click and go to paste special. Instead of pasting everything we're going to paste
just the comment and then click on OK. And your comment is taken over but the number here is not overwritten.
So we're gonna be covering the paste special options in more detail in a future lecture but I just wanted
to give you a quick heads up on how you can copy and paste notes or comments. So I've probably mix them
up as well while I'm talking and calling it sometimes comments, sometimes notes. It looks like that Microsoft
is still confused about it because in the paste spacial options we still see comments and not notes. At least
not yet.
OK so now let's take a look at the new Excel comments. So let's say
I open this workbook and I see a comment here from Chris Brown, who asks should we combine North and South
America to one region and I want to reply to him.
I'm just going to click on No and either press Control+Enter to send this or use this green icon here
and just send. So I'm going to press Control+Enter and that's it.
I can edit my comment and I can delete my comment. How do I insert a new comment? Again that's very easy.
We can just right mouse click and select new comment or insert a new comment from here. So you can see
the new comment options are prominently featured in the ribbon now. And the notes are all condensed to
one option.
So let's just add a new comment here.
Just type in, To check.
Now enter doesn't work.
It's just going to add a space here so don't forget Control+Enter to save the comment.
What if we want to see all comments. Let's click on Show comments and this time the difference is we get
all the comments here. We don't get our spreadsheet populated with all these boxes and conversations
but we get them off to the side right here. And you can just drag this and bring it anywhere you want
on your spreadsheet to follow the comments. Since we see them all in one view
we can also reply to all the comments right here.
We don't have to jump to that specific cell.
Once we are done we just click the X to close our comment box.
That's how you can work with notes and comments in Excel.