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
    2015-09-29T18:20:27+00:00

    "Microsoft decides what to do about bugs"

    Indeed. And those of their customers who are affected by their repeatedly ignoring bugs in products they pay for and need for their work or other activities decide how to criticise Microsoft. In nearly all other sectors where consumers are involved, manufacturers wouldn't be able to get away with ignoring faults in their products, but software manufacturers are still too immature to admit that certain faults can constitute a breach of contract. Professional clients obviously can't invoke consumer law, but that's not much help when a product doesn't work as it should.

    That you personally cannot reproduce a particular bug is quite irrelevant. Any decent IT specialist knows that many bugs only occur under particular circumstances, so the fact that one single user cannot reproduce a bug says exactly nothing about the existence or not of a bug.

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  2. Stefan Blom 351.7K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2015-09-29T23:28:22+00:00

    That you personally cannot reproduce a particular bug is quite irrelevant. Any decent IT specialist knows that many bugs only occur under particular circumstances, so the fact that one single user cannot reproduce a bug says exactly nothing about the existence or not of a bug.

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

    However, knowing the circumstances under which a problem occurs is an important first step. 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.

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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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