Comments in Documents

You can use comments to leave remarks and collaborate with others in a document. 

Add a comment

To add a comment to a document:

1

Select the text or table you want to comment on. To comment on a chart, select text associated with the chart.

Note: If you are working in text and don't make a selection, the comment is attached to the word closest to your cursor.

2

Right-click the text and select Add Comment from the menu.

3

Type your comment in the New Comment field and click Post.

You can mention both individual users and workspace groups to notify them about your comment. Type @ in the text box to view a list of users and existing groups. You can type @thread to notify all users that have participated in the current comment thread.

Users filtering by "My Mentions" in the Comments panel or in Home also see their group mentions included in results.

Note: By default, posting or replying to a comment with a group mention sends an email notification to all group members. You'll also receive a notification anytime someone responds to a thread you've participated in. Learn more about managing notifications. 

Manage comments

You can use the comment card or the Comments panel to manage your document’s comments. If you are a Document Owner, you can create, reply to, resolve, move, and delete comments. If you are an Editor or Viewer, you can perform any of these actions but can only delete your own comments.

A blue highlight in your document indicates comments associated with that selection. Clicking the highlighted content places a blue indicator next to the associated comment.

By default, comments and highlights are turned on in your document. You can show or hide comment indicators from the View toolbar.

If you'd like to track the status of an individual comment, you can click the label icon to enable Comment labels. Learn more about adding comment labels. 

View comments in comments home

You can view all of your comments in your Home under the Comments section. Comments with specific permissions which will be indicated with a key permissions icon  are also viewable in the comments home.

In here, you can expand comments to reply. You can’t make changes to permissions in the comments home. To edit permissions, you’ll have to go to the comment itself in the file.

Delete multiple or all comments

In the Comments panel, you can delete a selected comment, resolved comments, or all comments. Within Home, you can select multiple comments to delete. When comments are deleted, any replies within the comment thread are also deleted. 

Delete multiple comments in your file

Only document owners have access to delete all comments and delete resolved comments. However, if all of the active comments and/or resolved comments that exist in the document were created by a single user, these options for deleting comments would be available for this user, because they are the creator. 

Within the comments panel, there are three options for deleting comments: 

• Delete selected comment: Delete the comment that is currently selected.
• Delete resolved comments: Delete all comments that have been marked as resolved. 
• Delete all comments: Delete all comments in the file.
  

Before deleting resolved comments or all comments, you’ll need to type “Delete” to confirm.

Note: Deleting a selected comment, resolved comments, or all comments can’t be undone.

Delete multiple comments from Home

From the Comments tab in Home, you can select multiple comments to delete, but a comment will only be deleted successfully if you were the creator of the comment, or if the comment lives in a file in which you have owner permissions. 

To delete multiple comments from Home:

1

Select the Comments tab.

2

Mark the checkbox to the left of each comment you want to delete.

3

Select the trash icon in the top right corner.

4

To confirm that you want to delete the selected comments, type “Delete”.

5

Select Delete. 

Note: Deleting multiple comments can't be undone.

Move a comment

If you need to move one of your comments to another part of your document, you can use the Move Comment option.

To move an existing comment:

1

Select the text or table you want to move the comment to.

2

From the comment card or in the Comments panel, select drop down to open a menu.

3

Select Move Comment . 

Filter comments

Use the filter options to view specific types of comments, such as unresolved comments or comments containing @Mentions.

To apply a filter:

1

Open the Comments  panel.

2

Click the Filter icon.

3

Select how you want to filter your comments.

• Show for shows comments for the whole document or just the current section
• Status filters comments by open or resolved
• Label filters for comments assigned to specific labels
• Mentions lets you view only comments that @Mention you or a group you are in
• Date Updated filters comments made on a certain date, within a range of dates and times, or before/after a certain date
• Author shows comments made by a particular user
• Content allows you to search for keywords or phrases within comments

Disconnected comments

If the text your comment is connected to is removed from your document, a disconnected icon appears next to the comment. The comment's original selection (up to 400 characters) also appears in the comment card. 

To reconnect your comment, highlight a new selection in your document and select Reconnect Comment from the menu.

Export comments

When you export your file from Workiva as a PDF or DOCX, you can also include its comments. 

All open and resolved comments that a user has access to will be included in the export.

To include comments during export:

1. Open Export options.
2. Click the Advanced dropdown and check Include comments.
3. Click Export to finish.
   

To learn more on how to export, read Export a document.

There are some Word DOCX export limitations to be aware of.

Word doesn't support:

• Comments added in headers or footers. Instead, they'll anchor to the beginning of the section.
• Comments added inside of floating objects. Instead, they'll anchor to the associated paragraph.
• Disconnected comments. Disconnected comments will be exported with added text, "(Disconnected Comment)".

Manage email notifications

To manage when you get notified about comments, you can edit your comment thread notification preferences.

To edit your notifications, click the bell icon in the Comments panel or the Manage these notifications link in your email.

You can choose between three options:

• Only my @ mentions notifies you only when someone tags your username, a group you’re a member of, or specifically uses the @thread tag
• Replies to threads I’m participating in sends you an email any time someone replies in a comment thread you’ve previously replied to or were tagged in
• All comments on this document notifies you any time there is a comment made of any type, including replies and mentions.

Note: This only applies to your comment notifications on this file and does not impact other users.

Notifications are set independently for each file, so you can customize your notification settings on each individual document.