Comment balloons will not print. WORD 2010

Anonymous
2011-10-25T22:05:21+00:00

Comment balloons will not print.  I have a document that has insertions and deletiions in the text and comments in balloons in the right margin.  When I try to print it, the space is there in the right hand marginto accomidate the ballons but the balloons don't print.  They show up in the Word Print Preview.

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Anonymous
2014-01-15T14:08:17+00:00

This is a very old thread, but i'll post here as it's the top Google answer for 'word comments not printing.' I had this problem with a couple of users and i found the problem was that if a document is displayed in the Windows Explorer preview pane comments balloons won't print. With the preview pane disabled (or if you open the document from within Word, as others suggested), it will work. 

If it has been opened in the preview pane you need to open task manager and kill winword.exe if it is running in order for it to work.

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Anonymous
2012-05-17T17:55:05+00:00

Comment balloons will not print.  I have a document that has insertions and deletiions in the text and comments in balloons in the right margin.  When I try to print it, the space is there in the right hand marginto accomidate the ballons but the balloons don't print.  They show up in the Word Print Preview.

Here's what works for me.  It is still annoying, but at least I can get the comments to print in the shaded area on the paper to match the print preview.  This works for me for printing to PDF, to a networked HP, and to a networked Xerox Mobile Express driver.  I hope it works for you, too.

  1. Close Word.
  2. Re-open Word.
  3. Using Word (not Windows Explorer), open the document.
  4. Print your file.  On the Print page, under Settings, click the button that holds the options like "Print all pages" and make sure that the "Print mark-up" is checked.

I've started doing a test run by printing 1 page to the printer "Adobe PDF", so I know the comment balloons are really printing. This keeps me from wasting paper and pricey color toner, and saves the interruption of a jog down the hall to the network printer.  Once I know the balloons are visible in the PDF, then I send the whole document to print on the network printer.

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-09-30T11:29:55+00:00

    "You say that "it does print with comments when opened from within Word"  So, what is the process that you are following when it does not print?"

    As I described one year ago (mid-September 2014 in this thread), the comments printed once I had saved the .doc document as .docx, so they were in the document, and Word would have known something was wrong when I tried to print them but couldn't. But I got no error messages of any kind. Just a printout without the comments. 

    "Can you also please provide the same information - What is the process that you are using when the comments to not print?"

    Same process. Printing - after having chosen somewhere to print comments. Can't remember exactly where. It's one year ago. In any case, the exact same process gave me the comments when printing from the newly saved .docx document but not the original .doc document. I had already tried all the other suggestions in this thread in vain.

    As a year has passed before anyone started asking for more details, I'd need some research to find out which document it was, but i think I remember the subject. If so, it should be able to dig both document versions out of online backup if I don't still have them on my disk - if someone is really interested in analysing the problem now.

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  2. Doug Robbins - MVP - Office Apps and Services 323.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-09-30T08:33:40+00:00

    Megt1960

    You say that "it does print with comments when opened from within Word"  So, what is the process that you are following when it does not print?

    T. Frost

    Can you also please provide the same information - What is the process that you are using when the comments to not print?

    And, by the way, we had no way of knowing from your first posting to this thread, that you are using the same version of Office as Adele B who started this thread back in 2011

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-09-30T00:53:34+00:00

    "I never said that I have to be able to reproduce a (suspected) bug myself. Twisting my words isn't helping anyone."

    So what was the purpose of saying:

    "I am not convinced, since I haven't seen anything that I can reproduce."?

    "If you really want to help resolve this, you should explain, at a minimum, which version of Office and Windows you are using, and what you are doing when you see the problem. Does it apply to all documents or just some? Have you tried repairing a document where you see it? What about templates? Etc."

    If Microsoft really wanted to fix such bugs, they should have asked users reporting it when it happened. In my case, it's a year ago. Clearly, Microsoft ignores this bug, as they ignore so many other bugs in their products, so it would be a complete waste of time to provide any more detailed reporting.

    Which version of Office? 2010, as it says in the title. On Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit. No templates.

    "what you are doing when you see the problem"? 

    Trying to print the document with the comments, just as everybody else who has reported the problem here. That's pretty obvious.

    "Does it apply to all documents or just some?"

    Don't know. I do this very rarely. I'm happy to test it if someone is really dealing with this. If not, it's a waste of time to test it."Have you tried repairing a document where you see it?"

    No, and I don't know how to repair a Word document.

    If it was damaged, why didn't Word tell me it was damaged? What would damage it except Word itself anyway? That's the only program used to edit it.

    When there are comments in it and I try to print them and Word doesn't print them, why doesn't Word give me some information about what goes wrong instead of just totally ignoring the comments and the problem?

    When so many people report the same problem, it is simply appalling that Microsoft does exactly nothing about it.

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