question on Comments

[befuddle]

Greetings,

I've been having trouble using Comments, both in Word for Windows XP,
and now on my new Mac mini, OS X. I'm using Office 2004 (teachers and
students) and my upgrades are up to date. On my Mac, I have selected
ScreenTips and Balloons, Show Comments (in the Track Changes toolbar),
and I am looking at my document in Page Layout. But it's behaving very
erratically. In my current document, I initially had no trouble
creating comments, which showed up in balloons. But about halfway
through, when I try to insert a comment, the brackets appear but no
line leading to a bubble. The earlier comments still appear in bubbles.
I can type the comment in the reviewing pane, but as others in this
group have pointed out, the comments aren't numbered, so it's
confusing. It doesn't help that the font size in the reviewing pane is
tiny.

Also, for no apparent reason, the window of my document sometimes
shrinks to the same size as "Final," even though I still have "Final
With Markup" selected, so all my comment bubbles (those that work)
disappear. I have to quit Word and launch it again to get my view back.

These comments are really important for my work, so it's proving to be
a major inconvenience. I have tried to create new documents and pasting
in a copy of my original, without the final paragraph mark, but this
hasn't worked.

Can anyone make any other suggestions? Thanks kindly.

Befuddled

 

[CyberTaz]

Hello-

Are you by any chance running a stock Mini with the standard 256MB RAM?
If so, that could be another factor that underscores John's points...
especially if you are running any other apps at the same time and/or
the doc is quite large.

Another guess, but you might also confirm that the correct video driver
is selected. And, if your display permits, make sure you use a digital
connection as opposed to analog.

I also seem to recall other posts suggesting that Word does seem to
have trouble with 'lots' of comments, although the term 'lots' has
never been quantified.

Regards |:>)

 

[befuddle]

Hello-

Are you by any chance running a stock Mini with the standard 256MB RAM?
If so, that could be another factor that underscores John's points...
especially if you are running any other apps at the same time and/or
the doc is quite large.

Another guess, but you might also confirm that the correct video driver
is selected. And, if your display permits, make sure you use a digital
connection as opposed to analog.

I also seem to recall other posts suggesting that Word does seem to
have trouble with 'lots' of comments, although the term 'lots' has
never been quantified.

Regards |:>)

John and CyberTaz,

Thanks for your suggestions. Those bubbles are a pain, but I'd finally
got used to them. Yes, I have the Mini/256MB RAM. I will look into the
video drivers and connection.

If worst comes to worst, I'll just use footnotes instead (though the
nice thing about comments is that they're not part of my document).
I'll live!

Cheers!

 

[Clive Huggan]

John and CyberTaz,

Thanks for your suggestions. Those bubbles are a pain, but I'd finally
got used to them. Yes, I have the Mini/256MB RAM. I will look into the
video drivers and connection.

If worst comes to worst, I'll just use footnotes instead (though the
nice thing about comments is that they're not part of my document).
I'll live!

Cheers!

Dear l,

I don't like the Comments feature, and more particularly my colleagues, who
are interested in the documents' content, generally find it irritating.

As a substitute I use a character style (blue Arial italic 9 point, whereas
body text is 11 point Times New Roman), applied by AutoText or keyboard
shortcut, within the text. If the comment occupies a complete paragraph I
use an identical-looking paragraph style. These annotations are preceded /
followed by one or more "#" symbols, depending on the priority. It's a
simple but robust method that works well in intensive document development.

Full details are in some notes on the way I use Word for the Mac, titled
"Bend Word to Your Will", which are available as a free download from the
Word MVPs' website (http://word.mvps.org/MacWordNew/Bend/BendWord.htm). See
under the heading "Comment feature, a simple substitute for", starting on
page 114, and "Applying a style via keyboard shortcuts" on page 105.

[Note: The document is designed to be used electronically and most subjects
are self-contained dictionary-style entries. Be sure to read the front end
so you can use the document to best advantage and select the right settings
for reading it.]

During the draft stage of my documents, I delete all these annotations
quickly (Replace All) via Find & Replace on a Saved As copy that goes to
other people.

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is at least 7 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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