Some comments not appearing in contextual view, but appear in list view.

Yes, there appears to be a connection between unaccepted formatting changes and disappearing comments. Unfortunately, when collaborating with multiple authors, sometimes the formatting changes/track changes need to remain for other authors and editors to see what was altered. This issue is becoming exhausting for me. I am a technical writer and editor and eat, sleep, and breathe collaborative Word documents.

A volunteer moderator suggested that Microsoft is slow to fix issues that only impact some people, but with five pages of discussions about this issue that is clearly affecting many people, I wonder what the tipping point is?

I don't have any more time to waste on the phone with customer support.

Best,

Jenn

I am also having this issue. This thread has been very helpful in understanding what is happening. But I echo everyone's frustration that the issue has not been resolved.

We cannot collaborate on documents properly and trust that things are being tracked. This is significant for us.

EDIT: adding my current workaround options, noting they've already been mentioned in the thread, and all are far from ideal:

1. Add the comment to a smaller region of text, avoiding the start and end of the sentence/word
2. Show comments in List View instead of Contextual
3. Accept all tracked changes

I posted on this issue long ago.

My workaround is to always use the List View, unless there are only a few edits in the document and only a few comments. But using the List View is very inconvenient, particularly if there are a lot of comments (and there often are in my line of work).

It is a little easier if you expand the vertical List View window to the left so that it covers, say, half the screen. Then you can see and edit the comments more easily.

Hoping that Microsoft will fix this soon. Good luck to everyone!

P.S. Betting this will be fixed within days after Microsoft Legal finally notices the issue while reviewing one of their own contracts!

Thanks for this temporary workaround. I have tried all the other suggestions mentioned here such as highlighting a different portion of the text, but this can only be done if the comment is new. If the comment already has few ongoing comments from others, this method can't be used. Also, it's not too full proof as the comment can disappear again suddenly. Now I understand it's due to unaccepted formatting changes. I tried accepting the format changes and true enough, the comment appear again in Contextual view. Jennifer mentioned earlier this problem occurs ever since a Microsoft update? Coz I remember Word has never had any such issues before with the comments, even with all the formatting changes and this only occur for me in the past few months. I thought it was a corruption with my laptop that causes this, but since sooo many of you are reporting the same issue, then it's definitely a bug. I have also reported to Microsoft directly via their Help function, but so far don't have very high hopes they will respond or even try to find a fix.

If anyone knows someone connected to Microsoft, can they please get the word out to fix this small, but verry annoying issue. As mentioned by most people here that uses Word often, being able to view the comments in Contextual view and track changes (including formatting), is crucial for certain lines of work, so this issue has caused additional unnecessary challenges.

I am having exactly the same issue. It’s seems that it is still not resolved.