Do you want to learn how to view threaded comments in Microsoft Excel? Keep reading!

Microsoft has changed the comments system extensively in the Excel desktop app for Microsoft 365. Any comment you add in the latest Excel app shows options like date, time, and a reply button. It also allows you to edit, delete, or add a new comment as a reply.

If you’re new to this feature, you’ve come to the right place. Follow along with me as I show you multiple ways to visualize threaded comments in an Excel worksheet.

Hover Over the Comment Indicator

By default, comments won’t show up on the worksheet. Excel will only show purple indicators in cells that contain comments. So, when you hover the mouse cursor over any such cells, the actual threaded comment shows up.

However, if you don’t see any comment indicators as shown above in the screenshot, the feature must be disabled from the Excel Options dialog box.

To fix this issue, press Alt + F + T to bring up the Excel Options tool.

Click on the Advanced category in the left-side navigation panel.

Now, scroll down on the right-side menu to find the Display section.

Since comment indicators weren’t showing, the currently selected option should be No comments, notes, or indicators.

Change this by selecting the default threaded comment configuration which is Indicators and notes, and comments on hover.

Click OK on the Excel Options tool to apply the changes you have made.

Use the Review Tab

The Review tab has all the customizations and controls that you might use to make comments visible or invisible in an Excel worksheet. There’s a dedicated Comments block in this Excel ribbon menu.

Go to the Review tab and find the Comments block.

Click on the Show Comments command.

Excel will open a right-side navigation panel showing all the comments in the worksheet.

Comments are organized in the order they were added to the worksheet. For example, the first comment will be on the top of the right-side navigation panel and the comments that were added latest will be listed in the bottom of the stack.

This is the common approach to visualize Excel threaded comments in all the Excel desktop app editions that have this feature.

If you’re using the latest Excel for the Microsoft 365 desktop app, you’ll get an additional Comments button in the top right corner of the app interface. It should be near the Share button.

Sometimes, there might be endless comments in a large or extensively shared worksheet. Microsoft has added a filter feature in the Comments navigation panel to make it easier to find comments.

You can find it in the top right corner of the Comments stack. It looks like a funnel icon. Click on it and you’ll find three options to filter their visualized comments. These are as outlined below:

• @mentions me: It filters out all the comments except those where your Microsoft 365 account was mentioned.
• Active only: All active comments will be kept and the rest will be hidden.
• Resolved only: This setting clears out all active comments, leaving resolved ones behind.

Use the Comments Pane in Excel Online

If you’re using Excel for the web app, you can access your threaded comments from the same worksheets in the desktop app, if you activated AutoSave in the offline workbooks. Threaded comments are also available in online workbooks created solely on the Excel web app.

To view threaded comments in the web app, sign in to your Microsoft 365 portal and open the Excel workbook from which you wish to view some comments.

Once the workbook is open, click on the Comments button in the top right corner. You should be able to easily locate it below the Microsoft 365 profile and above the Excel ribbon menu on the top right side.

The Comments panel in the Excel for the web app also has a filter feature. This one is the same as the one you’ve seen in the Excel for Microsoft 365 desktop app.

However, the filter icon is a bit different. It’s an inverted pyramid drop-down menu. Click on that to find three filtering options, which are @mentions me, Active only, and Resolved only.

Print Comments

If you wish to view threaded comments in printed spreadsheets you can do that by following the steps mentioned in this section. All comments will be printed at the end of the main document, on a separate paper sheet. Please note that the comments won’t show up near the actual data. This is an intended feature to ensure the actual data is readable and not cluttered.

Firstly, open the worksheet that has a few comments.

Click on the Page Layout tab in the Excel ribbon menu.

Now, find the Page Setup extension arrow in the bottom right corner of the Page Setup command’s block.

Click on that extension arrow to open the Page Setup dialog box.

Go to the Sheet tab of the Page Setup dialog box.

Extend the options in the Comments and notes drop-down menu and select At end of sheet option.

Click OK to save and apply the changes you’ve made.

Now, press Ctrl + P to open the Print menu of Excel.

Scroll down to the bottom of the Print preview to find the comments.

Now, let’s say you wish to print the last few pages that print the comments only and not the actual dataset.

To do that, simply enter the page number in the Pages field below the Settings section of the Print configuration menu.

Using Excel VBA

Do you want to create a separate Comments worksheet by organizing all the comments in the workbook in a table format? You can use this Excel VBA macro to accomplish this task.

Before you can start creating the macro, find out the easy steps by checking out this quick Microsoft Excel tutorial:

📒 Read More: How To Use The VBA Code You Find Online

If you’re ready to create your own macro, use this Excel VBA script:

Sub ListThreadedComments()
    Dim ws As Worksheet
    Dim newWs As Worksheet
    Dim inputStr As String
    Dim sheetNames As Variant
    Dim i As Long, j As Long
    Dim commentIndex As Long
    
    ' Show input box to get worksheet names
    inputStr = InputBox("Enter the names of the worksheets (comma separated):", "List Threaded Comments")
    sheetNames = Split(inputStr, ",")
    
    ' Create a new worksheet for comments
    Set newWs = Sheets.Add(After:=Sheets(Sheets.Count))
    newWs.Name = "Comments"
    
    ' Set up headers in the new worksheet
    With newWs
        .Cells(1, 1).Value = "Commenter's Name"
        .Cells(1, 2).Value = "Comment"
        .Cells(1, 3).Value = "Comment Location"
    End With
    
    commentIndex = 2 ' Start from the second row for comments data
    
    ' Loop through each specified worksheet
    For i = LBound(sheetNames) To UBound(sheetNames)
        Set ws = Sheets(Trim(sheetNames(i)))
        
        ' Loop through each threaded comment in the worksheet
        For j = 1 To ws.CommentsThreaded.Count
            With ws.CommentsThreaded(j)
                newWs.Cells(commentIndex, 1).Value = .Author.Name
                newWs.Cells(commentIndex, 2).Value = .Text
                newWs.Cells(commentIndex, 3).Value = .Parent.Address
                commentIndex = commentIndex + 1
            End With
        Next j
    Next i
    
    MsgBox "Threaded comments listed successfully in the 'Comments' sheet.", vbInformation
End Sub

Now that you’ve created the macro, press Alt + F8 to bring up the Macro dialog box.

Select the ListThreadedComments macro and hit Run to execute it.

Excel will show a dialog box that you can use to enter the list of worksheets separated by commas. The VBA script will only extract comments from these worksheets.

Once you click OK, the macro will create a new worksheet in the same workbook. The name of the sheet will be Comments.

Navigate to the new worksheet to find all the threaded comments listed in a tabular data format. There, you should see the name of the commenter, the actual comment, and the cell addresses of the listed comments.

Conclusions

So, now you know how to view threaded comments in Microsoft Excel.

You’ve learned multiple approaches involving Excel user interface options, like the Comments button in the top right corner and the Show Comments command in the Review tab.

You’ve also learned how to print all threaded comments if you wish to view them on a paper sheet.

Finally, you learned how to create a VBA macro to list all the threaded comments of an Excel workbook in a separate worksheet in the same Excel file.

If this Excel guide helped you to learn a new skill, use the comment box to share your experience. You can share feedback and suggestions if you want to.