Microsoft Word to get new comments pane on Windows Desktop; Available to Office Insiders now

Microsoft Word on Windows Desktop will soon receive a new feature called Comments pane that provides a “focused view” of comments as well as an optional “all comments”.

Available in Word for Windows to Insiders (Beta Channel), this feature brings a modern commenting experience and thus boosts the collaboration experience in Word.

Explore modern commenting

Choose your view of comments

The new experience shows comments to the right of the page by default. This allows you to focus on your content without missing active comments related to the part of the document you’re working on.

When you resolve comments, they’ll be moved out of your way to the Comments pane, where you can always find them later.

To switch between the default, focused view of comments to the right of the page and the Comments pane, simply click the Comments button in the upper right corner of your Word window. We like to call this the “Collab corner!”

Remain in control

Your comments will be seen by others only after you’ve finished editing them and have clicked the Post button.

You can also bring others into the conversation using @mention. Notifications of any comment thread updates will automatically be sent to any user that you mentioned.

How it works

1. Create a comment thread:

• Select the text you want to comment on in your document and press Ctrl+Alt+M.
• Type your comment, and then click Post.

2. Take comments for a test drive:

• Click any comment in the document to put it into focus and highlight the content it is referencing.

3. Reply to a comment thread with an @mention:

• Click in the box that contains @mention or reply… to reply to an existing comment.
• Type @ and the name of the person whose attention your want to draw.
• Click Post to complete your reply.

4. Resolve a comment thread:

• Click “…” on any comment thread, and then click Resolve thread to mark it as complete.
• If you later need to review all of the resolved comments, click the Comments button in upper right corner of the Word window to open the Comments pane.

Known Issues

Some known issues to be aware of as you use the comments experience:

• Accessibility features, such as keyboard navigation and the screen reader experiences, are not yet complete. Updates to improve accessibility features will be rolling out soon.
• Office themes are not yet fully supported. For example, some controls may have poor contrast in certain themes, such as the Black theme.
• Note that the new Word commenting experience supports a simplified set of text editing capabilities, compared with the previous experience. For example, you’re able to type Bold, Italic, Underline and Strikethrough text, but you will not be able to change font type or color inside comments.

Source: Microsoft