If you want to learn how to show comments in Microsoft Excel, read this guide until the end to find the proven methods.

Often, your Excel workbooks or worksheets contain numerous threaded comments. To keep the actual data readable and visible, Excel will only show these comments when you want it to. Here, your skill in making comments visible comes into play.

Follow along with me as I show you multiple ways to make comments visible. These techniques will prove useful in different situations. Let’s get started!

Using Excel Options

There are two types of comments in Microsoft Excel. These are Notes and Comments. When saying Comments, it means threaded comments where you get a time stamp and a reply field.

Notes are usually visible if not disabled from Excel Options. However, Comments are never visible. You’ll only get a Comment indicator in the top right corner of the cell. If the feature has been turned off in Excel Options indicators aren’t visible either.

When you see no Comments in a worksheet or workbook and you know there should be some, press Alt + F + T to open the Excel Options dialog box.

Click on the Advanced menu in the left side panel and scroll down to the Display section on the right side menu.

Excel won’t show any Comment indicators if you see that the No comments, notes, and indicators option is selected,

Change the selection to any of the following:

• Indicators only, and comments and notes on hover
• Indicators and notes, and comments on hover

📒 Read More: Microsoft Excel Note vs Comment: Explained

Hover Over the Cell

If you see the Comment indicators already, all you need to do is hover the mouse cursor over the cell to view the contents of the threaded comments.

However, this method is only useful for you if you wish to go through all comments one by one.

Also, this technique is only suitable for an Excel worksheet with very few numbers of threaded comments.

Using the Review Tab

The Excel Review tab is the home for all the options and ways to customize or visualize comments. You can find all the useful commands related to threaded comments in the Comments block.

Open the source worksheet and go to the Review tab.

Go to the Comments block and click on the Previous Comment command to quickly select the cell and pop open the comment that is previous to the currently selected comment or cell.

Similarly, click on the Next Comment button to see the comment that comes next to the presently highlighted cell or comment.

If you wish to visualize all the comments in the order of their appearance, you can click on the Show Comments command in the Comments block of the Review tab.

All the comments on the sheet will show up in the right-side navigation panel, named Comments.

The navigation pane will show the total number of threaded comments in the sheet and organize all of these in the order of appearance.

You’ll also see a filter button in the top right corner. It allows you to filter comments by options like @mentions Me, Active only, and Resolved only.

Show Comments Using the UI Button

In Excel for Microsoft 365 desktop and Excel for the web app, there’s an easily accessible Comments command in the top right corner. It works exactly as the Show Comments button in the Review tab.

If you’re working on the Excel desktop app, you should find the Comments button just below the Diamond button or the Premium Features button.

Contrarily, if you’re using Excel for the web app, the Comments button should be below the Excel avatar in the top right corner.

Comments is the 4th button from the Share button in the top right corner.

Showing Comments in Excel Mobile App

You can also create, edit, and visualize comments in the Excel mobile apps on iOS and Android devices. However, the features and user interfaces are quite different between the mobile and desktop apps. In the mobile app, you can cycle through the comments one after the other.

Open the Excel mobile app in your iOS or Android app.

Click on any cell that contains a comment. You’ll know which cell contains a comment by noticing the purple Comment indicator in the top right corner of the cell.

Once you touch such a cell, a purple text box will open in the top right corner.

Tap on that to open the Comments panel at the bottom of the screen.

This is the comment for the cell you have selected.

To check the rest of the comments, swipe the comments panel to the right or the left.

Print Threaded Comments

The default print settings in Excel don’t print the comments. So, if you’re willing to print comments of an Excel worksheet to visualize those in paper sheets, you’ll need to make some changes in the Excel print settings.

Navigate to the source worksheet and click on the Page Setup tab in the Excel ribbon menu.

Go to the Page Setup block and click on the Page Setup extension arrow. For your reference, I have highlighted the clickable arrow in the screenshot given above.

On the Page Setup dialog box, click on the Sheet tab.

Now, go to the Print section on the settings box and click on the Comments and notes drop-down menu.

Select the At end of sheet option in the list that shows up.

Click OK to save the changes you’ve made.

Press Ctrl + P to bring up the Print screen.

Scroll down to the bottom of the Print Preview screen to find the comments printed at the bottom of the sheet.

If everything looks good, you can continue printing the worksheet.

Conclusions

So far, you should have explored and learned various ways to show comments in Excel. Whenever you’re looking for comments in a worksheet, don’t forget to tweak the Excel Options Advanced Display settings if you don’t find any comments in the first place.

When you see the Comment indicators, you can use the mouse cursor hovering to check comments one by one or use the Show Comments command from the Review tab to make all comments visible simultaneously.

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