Seeing comments

[Steve Hayes]

I've sent a document composed in Word 97 to someone, and they say that their
computer does not show comments.

On mine, they show up as yellow highlights, and when you hover the cursor over
them the comment appears..

Is there anything I can suggest that they can do?

[Karen]

Hi Steve,

I wonder if you could suggest they go to Tools, Options, View and under
the word "Show" they ensure the box "screen tips" is checkmarked. I'm
not sure if Word 97 has this feature, but it's available in Word 2003.

Best of luck with this!
Karen

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Depending on version, they may see your document differently. They won't see
the popups unless they have ScreenTips enabled on the View tab of Tools |
Options. And if they have Word 2002 or 2003, they may see your comments in
"balloons" in the margins and/or in the Reviewing Pane at the bottom of the
screen (if it is displayed).
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

Post by Steve Hayes
I've sent a document composed in Word 97 to someone, and they say that their
computer does not show comments.
On mine, they show up as yellow highlights, and when you hover the cursor over
them the comment appears..
Is there anything I can suggest that they can do?
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Stan Brown]

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 11:06:58 +0200 from Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes
I've sent a document composed in Word 97 to someone, and they say that their
computer does not show comments.

Which release of Word are they using?

Post by Steve Hayes
On mine, they show up as yellow highlights, and when you hover the cursor over
them the comment appears..
Is there anything I can suggest that they can do?

If they're running Word 2003, View:: Markup should do it.

Otherwise, have them type "show comments" (no quotes) into Help and
follow the instructions.

[Steve Hayes]

Post by Stan Brown
Tue, 07 Mar 2006 11:06:58 +0200 from Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes
I've sent a document composed in Word 97 to someone, and they say that their
computer does not show comments.

Which release of Word are they using?

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions... I've passed them on. By she says
she is using something called "Ability Word", which i hadn't heard of (and
neither had she till she started using that computer(

[Stan Brown]

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 05:34:11 +0200 from Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by Stan Brown
Tue, 07 Mar 2006 11:06:58 +0200 from Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes
I've sent a document composed in Word 97 to someone, and they
say that their computer does not show comments.

Which release of Word are they using?

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions... I've passed them on. By
she says she is using something called "Ability Word", which i
hadn't heard of (and neither had she till she started using that
computer(

Oh. And silly us, we thought you were asking a question about
Microsoft Word. :-)

There's a free program called Abiword or Abi Word, that I've seen
recommendef. Maybe that's what she's got?

[Daiya Mitchell]

Post by Steve Hayes

Post by Stan Brown
Tue, 07 Mar 2006 11:06:58 +0200 from Steve Hayes

Post by Steve Hayes
I've sent a document composed in Word 97 to someone, and they say that their
computer does not show comments.

Which release of Word are they using?

Thanks to everyone who made suggestions... I've passed them on. By she says
she is using something called "Ability Word", which i hadn't heard of (and
neither had she till she started using that computer(

In that case, her program probably can't read the comments--Word uses some
sort of special code to save them in with the document, and a program has to
specifically provide for reading that code for comments to be exchanged.
Ditto for Track Changes and all Word's special reviewing features.

Although I thought both OpenOffice.org and AbiWord did promise to show
reviewing features from Word. She might also check into the MS Word Viewer,
which ought to show comments, I imagine. So first, she needs to find out if
her program is supposed to show comments, and if it does, then she needs to
ask people who know about that program how to see them.

If this is what's she's using, doesn't look so promising on quick glance.
http://ability.com/

Alternatively, get it showing on your machine, and use a PDF print driver to
create a PDF to send her instead.

[Steve Hayes]

On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 09:21:09 -0800, Daiya Mitchell

Post by Daiya Mitchell
If this is what's she's using, doesn't look so promising on quick glance.
http://ability.com/

No, it doesn't.

Post by Daiya Mitchell
Alternatively, get it showing on your machine, and use a PDF print driver to
create a PDF to send her instead.

I think that's what I'll have to do, thoguh I'm not sure that the comments
themselves (as opposed to the highlighting) will show up in a PDF documen.

Is there any way to extract comments from Word and print them as a separate
document?

[Daiya Mitchell]

Post by Steve Hayes
On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 09:21:09 -0800, Daiya Mitchell

Post by Daiya Mitchell
Alternatively, get it showing on your machine, and use a PDF print driver to
create a PDF to send her instead.

I think that's what I'll have to do, thoguh I'm not sure that the comments
themselves (as opposed to the highlighting) will show up in a PDF documen.

You are using Word 97 and can't have balloons showing comments, right?

Post by Steve Hayes
Is there any way to extract comments from Word and print them as a separate
document?

Somewhere in the Print dialog should be something about Print What: Markup,
which I think prints just the markup, and maybe an option for Print What:
Document plus Markup. Play with those. I don't think they are a new
feature.

In my print dialog, it's under the MS Word settings, and I could easily set
Document Showing Markup and then send the print job to the PDF printer
instead, I think. But I'm using Word 2004 on a Mac, so it may be different
for you.

Alternatively, comments seem to be coded similarly to footnotes. It might be
possible to put the cursor in the Comment pane in Word 97 and select all and
copy (since it's possible with footnotes).

[Ed]

Hi Steve,

In addition to the other suggestions ...

If they are using Word 97 or 2000 they may need to tick
Tools/Options/View/ScreenTips as Karen suggested to see the yellow
highlights and also Tools/Options/View/Hidden text to see the comments
at all.

Cheers.

Ed

Post by Steve Hayes
I've sent a document composed in Word 97 to someone, and they say that their
computer does not show comments.
On mine, they show up as yellow highlights, and when you hover the cursor over
them the comment appears..
Is there anything I can suggest that they can do?
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

[Steve Hayes]

Post by Karen
Hi Steve,
In addition to the other suggestions ...
If they are using Word 97 or 2000 they may need to tick
Tools/Options/View/ScreenTips as Karen suggested to see the yellow
highlights and also Tools/Options/View/Hidden text to see the comments
at all.

Thanks Ed, and everyone else who replied.

In case anyone else has a similar problem, this is what I did:

Frist, tried Open Office -- it doesn't show comments/redlining in Word
Documents, so is no good for the purpose. If it can't do that, probably this
Abi Word can't do it either.

So what I did was:

Download the MS Word Viewer from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=95E24C87-8732-48D5-8689-AB826E7B8FDF&displaylang=en

Open the document in the viewer -- it shows the comments.

Print from the viewer to PDF using PDF Creator (freeware).

It shows the comments.

Send the pdf file to the person, and recommend that they get Word Viewer.

PDF creater would NOT print a showing comment version directly from MS Word,
only when the file was open in Word Viewer.

It means that the person can't resond to the comments in the document itself -
only by creating a new file, and I'll have to copy/paste changes, or rewrite.
But at leasst part of the job is done.

Once again, thanks for the help.