Excel comments not displaying

Hey Sam,

Thanks so much for this but, on another thread I was told changing to Insider Fast was a better option than reverting to a previous version as there were risks etc etc.

I am not an excel whizz so am not really confident enough to give this a go as this is a shared file with our directors.  Also, even if I revert to the prior version, unless all the directors in our company also do the same, they will still be unable to see the comments, is that right?

Thanks

Faye -

I find that Insider Fast releases are full of bugs that are in fact worse than the problem you are trying to solve.  

When multiple people need to share an Excel file with lots of comments (our Delivery Schedule has thousands of comments), then I recommend all users be on a previous "stable" version of Excel, and that you test new releases of Excel on only one computer before allowing everyone to upgrade.

You also should keep backups of the data files most important to your business so that if corruption does happen you only lose recent changes.  In our company all computers have OneDrive storage for cloud backup, and in addition all users run a Carbon Copy Cloner full disk backup weekly (only changed files are copied so it's fast).

The install process I describe in the above thread worked fine for me, but if you are doing Carbon Copy Cloner backups then you should do one prior to deleting Excel and installing a previous version - just on general principle.  At the same time this isn't like an OS update so you can always just re-install Office 365 at any time and you would get the lates apps.

Good luck!

Sam

Hey Sam,

Thanks so much for this but, on another thread I was told changing to Insider Fast was a better option than reverting to a previous version as there were risks etc etc.

I am not an excel whizz so am not really confident enough to give this a go as this is a shared file with our directors.  Also, even if I revert to the prior version, unless all the directors in our company also do the same, they will still be unable to see the comments, is that right?

Thanks

To All Users who Need Comments in Excel -

I've fought this problem for most of a year and found that installing a previous working version of Excel solves the problem and allows me to get on with my work.  I then monitor the new Excel releases and if a big change occurs I may install and try that.

Try going  to the following Thread to see my instructions for installing the previous version - **Excel Comments don't show on Rollover in Excel for Mac 16.17 (180909)**or click here.

I hope that Microsoft will start treating this problem with the professionalism that it deserves.  Regularly breaking essential functionality is a sign of a software team that is not well managed.

Sam

My excel file has had all the comments wiped out completely which is causing me untold grief at work!

I already noted this on another thread which informed me to update to Insider Fast and that would resolve the problem, it hasn't and now apparently my worksheet has no comments and but now has some "Notes" which are two comments I have added since this problem started.

Why on earth would you waste time changing the name of comments to notes and messing around with a function that has worked fine for years?

How will I get all the comments back from the original file? It also removed the freezed panes, the filters, changed the colour of highlighted cells and completely re-sized the columns so they are way smaller than the text within them.

I can't re-boot an old version of the file as it gets updated multiple times each day.

As mentioned before I am on a Mac using High Sierra (not Mojave!), using latest version of excel (16.19), i open the file online through 365 and then click edit in excel, the comments dont show in either format

Thanks for help!

October 2018 - two years, still not fixed. Great work Microsoft.