Learn how to add a note in Excel to make your spreadsheets more informative and easier to navigate.

Adding a note in Excel is like marking a page in a thick book—it helps make things clearer. If you don’t know how to do it, you might waste time looking for answers instead of fixing problems.

Notes let you add important details, making your data easier to read and share. It may seem tricky at first, but this guide will show you how to do it step by step.

By the end, you’ll learn this helpful skill and make your spreadsheets better and more professional. Keep reading to learn this useful feature and collaborate efficiently on shared spreadsheets.

Using the Right-Click Method

Select a cell where you want the note and right-click.

Click on the New Note option from the right-click context menu.

Alternatively, you can right-click, press N twice, and hit Enter.

A yellow note will be added on the right side of the selected cell.

A thin arrow links the note with the parent cell. You can drag the note around the worksheet to adjust the visibility of the dataset.

Using a Keyboard Shortcut

If you’d like to navigate on an Excel worksheet only using the keyboard to pace up your data analytics game, this keyboard shortcut is specifically for you.

Use the keyboard arrow keys to select the target cell to insert a note.

Press the Shift + F2 keys together.

Excel will add the note instantly.

Using the Review Tab

So far, you’ve learned the quick methods to add notes. However, the default Notes tool of Excel is in the Review tab. It allows you to create a new note as well as manage one or more notes.

Open a worksheet, select a cell, and press Alt + R + T to open the Notes context menu.

Press N to add a new note.

Other functions of this tool are as outlined below:

• Previous Note (P)
• Next Note (T)
• Show/Hide Note (O)
• Show All Notes (S)
• Convert to Comments (C)

Using a Hyperlink With ScreenTip

Often, you need to attach hyperlinks to a cell to redirect to another workbook or a webpage. Cells with a link only show a blue font color and underlined text. You can add ScreenTip notes to give the user more context. These notes will flash only when hovering the cursor over the hyperlink. Let me show you how below.

Select the cell where you’d like to insert a hyperlink and press Ctrl + K.

This will bring up the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

Paste the hyperlink in the Address field.

Now, click on the ScreenTip button in the top right corner of the Insert Hyperlink window.

Enter the note you want to flash in the ScreenTip text field.

Click OK to save the note. Also, click OK on the Insert Hyperlink dialog box to save the changes and close it.

Now, if you go back to the cell containing the URL and hover the mouse cursor over the hyperlink, you’ll see a small floating note.

To edit or disable ScreenTip notes, follow all the steps mentioned above until you reach the ScreenTip text field. Edit the existing note or remove it. Don’t forget to press OK on all the successive windows to save the modification.

Using the Data Validation Tool

When creating a Data Validation rule in a cell range, you can add a note to instruct the data entry operators what to do and not do as they start entering data in that cell range.

For example, you can show small tips, like allowed date format, time format, units, and so on. If you didn’t know this Excel feature so far, follow these steps to practice and learn.

Suppose, you’ve got a dataset like the one shown above. Here, you want a data entry operator to punch in the hours consumed for each project in the Actual Time column. However, you don’t want the text string hours in the cells.

To create this data entry control, select the cell range where you want to set up the rule.

Click on the Data Validation command in the Data Tools block of the Data tab in the Excel ribbon menu.

You’ll see the Data Validation dialog box. Click on the Allow drop-down menu and choose Decimal as the allowed data.

There are more customization options you can use, like Data, Minimum, and Maximum fields to restrict time entries within a range, equal to a value, and more.

Go to the Input Message tab. Type in the nature of the note, like Instructions in the Title field.

Now, enter the actual note in the Input message field and click OK.

Now, go back to the dataset and click on any of the cells entered into the Data Validation rule.

Great work! You’ll see the note you’ve just added.

A benefit of this method over any other mentioned so far is that it requires medium to advanced Excel expertise to edit or delete such notes. So, if your workbook is intended for intermediate-level Excel users, like routine data entry operators or students, use this method to enter notes so the users can’t modify them.

Using an Excel Formula

You can use an Excel formula to add notes to structured datasets to give additional context to raw data. Often, you simply need to print logistics or sales reports for non-technical stakeholders or employees. They don’t need to go through the underlying raw data. They just need to see a complete value with notes.

For instance, in the above dataset, you want to create a combined data column where it would show $1500 Regular Sales instead of separately showing these values. Then, you can hide the raw data and keep the combined information when presenting a report to a non-technical stakeholder.

For the next quarter or month, you can replace the values in the Sales ($) and Note columns and the Combined column will update automatically.

Now, on your worksheet, select the cell where you want to create a dynamic Excel formula to show notes.

Copy and paste the following formula into the cell:

="Sales: $" & A2 & " (" & B2 & ")"

Don’t forget to adjust the cell references according to your own dataset.

Hit Enter to calculate the formula.

Drag the fill handle down to apply the formula to the remaining cells in the column.

You can now see combined data in the additional column. The raw data remains untouched making way for further analysis.

This method is more effective than the default note system in Excel because the audience now doesn’t have to constantly hover the cursor over different cells to get an idea about the sales inputs. They’ll get a big picture from clusters of raw data.

Conclusions

So far, you’ve seen how to add a note in Excel using different methods suitable for a wide range of use cases. You can use the right-click context menu if you’re occasionally adding notes to a few cells in your worksheet and prefer mouse-based movements over keyboard-based navigation.

Contrarily, I’ve also explained a keyboard hotkey-based method to achieve the same result. It’s especially suitable for keyboard-based Excel usage for more productivity.

Moreover, I’ve explained special methods, like ScreenTip for hyperlinks, Data Validation Input Message, and a custom Excel formula for combining notes with values.

Did this Excel tutorial help you learn a new skill today? Which method did you like the most? Do you know any better way to add a note in Excel that I might have missed to mention? Use the comment box to write a reply.