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
    2014-10-20T07:03:53+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.

    I think I have just discovered the solution to the above persistent and tiring problem which I have been facing for some time.  I think the answer lies in the print option that reads, "Print All Pages".  Do not click on this icon, even if you wish to print all the pages.  Instead: (1) find out the page numbers as shown in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen (not the page numbers that are seen on your document) when it is open with the document that is to be printed, from the very first page to the very last page; (2) then indicate this page range in the box on the print menu, as if you have selected this range of pages to be printed. (3) thereafter, you should proceed to print as if you are printing only the selected pages (though you have selected the full range of pages from the very first to the very last such that you will eventually have printed ALL THE PAGES. (4) I did this thrice, and I had the comments and deletions in the balloons in the right margin printed along with the main body of each page. I hope this works consistently for all the word documents and for everyone.  Cheers.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-09-08T16:51:23+00:00

    I just encountered this problem, and none of the solutions here worked for me.

    Here's what did work for me: I saved a copy of the document in Word 2003-07 compatibility mode, then printed that copy. For whatever reason, the balloon text printed properly this way.  

    This is the opposite of what T. Frost did, so maybe saving in a different format--either from .doc to .docx or .docx to .doc--somehow fixes the problem.

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  3. Stefan Blom 351.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2014-09-07T17:47:44+00:00

    After trying many suggestions that didn't work, I finally noticed that the document was in "compatibility mode" i.e. with filetype=doc.

    After saving it as docx, the comments in balloons printed.

    Comment balloons should work even in *.doc files. In fact, the balloons were introduced in Word 2003, before the *.docx format was released.

    Most likely, your file was damaged and saving back and forth between formats fixed it.

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