I've been asked by several readers if there's a way to convert Word comments (Insert > Comment) to document text. It depends on what \"convert\" means. If you just need to get the text of a bunch of comments, you can open the Comments pane (View > Comments), select all, copy, and then paste to a new document. Easily done.<\/p>\n
If you want to turn comments *into* text in the document where the comments live, here's a macro that will do the job:<\/p>\n
\nSub Comments2Text()\nDim objComment As Comment\nFor Each objComment In ActiveDocument.Comments\nobjComment.Reference.InsertAfter \" <\" & objComment.Initial _\n& \": \" & objComment.Range.Text & \"> \"\nobjComment.Delete\nNext\nEnd Sub\n<\/pre>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
If you don't know how to use macros like that one, you can find out here:<\/p>\n
Before running the macro, be sure to back up your document, just in case.<\/p>\n
As written, the macro puts the initials and text of each comment, in angle brackets, into the document text and then deletes the comment.<\/p>\n
If you don't want to use angle brackets, you can change them to some other character or string of characters by modifying the following two lines (note that there's a space before and after the brackets, which you can omit if you like):<\/p>\n
\nobjComment.Reference.InsertAfter \" <\" & objComment.Initial _\n& \": \" & objComment.Range.Text & \"> \"\n<\/pre>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
If you don't want to delete the comments, just remove this line:<\/p>\n
\nobjComment.Delete\n<\/pre>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
If you wanted to, you could use parentheses--<\/p>\n
\nobjComment.Reference.InsertAfter \" (\" & objComment.Initial _\n& \": \" & objComment.Range.Text & \") \"\n<\/pre>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
--and then use our NoteStripper program to turn the parenthetical comments into footnotes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nYou could also use our Puller program to pull items in brackets or parentheses into another file.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nFinally, you could format items in angle brackets (or other delimiters) to make them stand out from text. Red would be nice. Here's how:<\/p>\n
1. Back up your file, just in case.<\/p>\n
2. Click Edit > Replace.<\/p>\n
3. In the Find What box, enter this:<\/p>\n
<*><\/p>\n
4. In the Replace With box, enter this:<\/p>\n
^&<\/p>\n
5. Click the More button if it's there.<\/p>\n
6. With your cursor in the Replace With box, click Format > Font > Font color > red.<\/p>\n
7. Click the OK button.<\/p>\n
8. Put a check in the Use Wildcards box.<\/p>\n
9. Click the Replace All button.<\/p>\n
All of your bracketed comments should now be red.<\/p>\n
You can learn more about searching with wildcards in my free paper, \"Advanced Searching in Microsoft Word,\" which you can download here:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThanks to Jenn Morris for suggesting this topic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
_________________________________________<\/p>\n
RESOURCES<\/p>\n
Visual Thesaurus provides a revolutionary way to see words in relation to other words. Fascinating, fun, and useful, all at the same time:<\/p>\n