MS Word 2016 comment bubbles not numbered

Anonymous
2016-11-17T18:10:54+00:00

I am using MS Office 2016 and it seems that comment bubbles are no longer numbered like they were in previous versions. When a reviewer using an older version of Word refers to a specific comment by its number, I cannot tell which comment they are referring to because the comments are not numbered in Word 2016. Does anyone know why this feature was removed or how to fix it? It is extremely frustrating that the numbering of comments has been removed. Thank you,

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Stefan Blom 353.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2016-11-17T19:42:44+00:00

In Word 2016 (and 2013), comment numbers only display when you look at the print preview (at File | Print) or when you print the document, unfortunately. As a workaround, you can apply paragraph numbering to the Comment Text style.

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-06-19T20:48:04+00:00

    NONE of the given workarounds here (macros, styles etc.) solve the problem mentioned initally. What you need for a proper review with multiple roundtrips are FIXED and VISIBLE comment numbers which do not change even if you add more comments.

    In the "real world", complex answers to complex comments are often given in external documents, excel sheets, emails, handwritten or on Skype meetings: "Let's look at comment number 123. Everybody on the same page?"

    This was nicely implemented in old Word, when comments started with something like "FK123", in print AND screen version - with "FK" as the author's initials and "123" as a fixed/constant/static number, even if you delete older or insert preceding comments.

    How hard can it be?!

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