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. Stefan Blom 353.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2018-06-19T07:12:22+00:00

    Yes, I've just switched to Word 2016 at my university job. This is very frustrating. I used the referral to comments numbers as in the question here routinely in comments on student work. Using paragraph numbering is clumsy and not very helpful. The numbering needs to come back

    I agree that using paragraph numbering is a bit clumsy; after all, it is a workaround (which has been required since comment numbering was re-designed in Word 2013).

    Doug's macro from 2017 does a better job:

    Sub NumberComments()

    'Macro created by MVP Doug Robbins, April 2017

    Dim i as Long

    Dim rngComment as Range

    With ActiveDocument

        For i = 1 to .Comments.Count

            Set rngComment = .Comments(i).Range

            With rngComment

                If Left(.Text, 7) = "Comment" Then

                    .Text = "Comment " & i & " " & Mid(.Text, Instr(.Text, "-"))

                Else

                    .Text = "Comment " & i & " - " & .Text

                End If

            End With

        Next i

    End With

    End Sub

    The macro can be run repeatedly to update the numbering.

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