Printing Document Comments

Comments that you may add to a document are considered a part of the "markup" of a document. If you want to print a list of comments, they can be printed as part of this markup. All you need to do is display the Print dialog box and use the Print What drop-down list to specify what you want to print. You can choose several things from this drop-down list, including the following:

• Document Showing Markup. This option prints your document with the comments shown in-place, using balloons. This is essentially how you see the comments if you are viewing your document in Print Layout view.
• List of Markup. This option produces a comments list, much like those produced in previous versions of Word.

Understanding that "markup" is a generic term that refers to any changes made in a document (if Track Changes is turned on), printing a List of Markup still may not give you what you want, if you want to print only a list of comments. Indeed, the markup list includes all markup, not just comments.

If you want to print just the comments without the other markup, there is no way to do this in Word. You can, however, create a macro that will print your comments. The best approach is to gather all your comments and place them in a new document you can then print.

Sub PrintOnlyComments()
    Dim oThisDoc As Document
    Dim oThatDoc As Document
    Dim c As Comment
    Dim sTemp As String
    Dim iPage As Integer

    Set oThisDoc = ActiveDocument
    Set oThatDoc = Documents.Add

    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    For Each c In oThisDoc.Comments
        'Find page number of comment
        oThisDoc.Select
        c.Reference.Select
        iPage = Selection.Information(wdActiveEndAdjustedPageNumber)

        'Put info in new document
        oThatDoc.Select
        Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdStory
        sTemp = "Page: " & iPage
        Selection.TypeText Text:=sTemp
        Selection.TypeParagraph
        sTemp = "[" & c.Initial & c.Index & "] " & c.Range
        Selection.TypeText Text:=sTemp
        Selection.TypeParagraph
    Next
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

This macro creates a new document, then steps through each comment in the original document and adds it to the new document. There are three properties that are used in putting the text into the new document: the Initial, Index, and Range properties. The Initial property is the initials of the comment's author, the Index property is the number of the comment within the document, and the Range property is the text of the comment itself.