Among different kinds of not-working problems in Excel, not-working comment issues are a crucial issue. Excel’s comment feature is quite necessary and useful in our regular usage. So if it doesn’t work properly then it hampers our work and consumes time. If you are already facing this issue and searching for a source to overcome the situation then you have visited the right place. We are here to help you solve the issue when comments are not displaying properly in Excel with 3 quick fixes.
Comments Are Not Displaying Properly in Excel: 3 Solutions
First of all, get introduced to our dataset that shows some books’ prices and publishing years. Look, cell B5 and B9 are containing two comments.
1. Mark Indicator Only, and Comments and Notes on Hover Option
The most frequent and common reason is maybe you or someone else may have activated the No comments, notes, or indicators option from the Excel options. Look here at the dataset, the comments are no more. Let’s check the option and solve it.
Solution:
- Click on the File tab beside the Home tab.
- Next, click on Options from the appeared menu.
Soon after, the Excel Options dialog box will open up.
- Select the Advanced menu.
- Then scroll down and go to the Display section.
And look, the No comments, notes, or indicators option is activated here, that’s why no comments were displaying.
- Now mark the Indicators only, and comments and notes on hover option.
- Finally, just press OK.
Now see the comments are displaying properly.
Read More: [Fixed!] Comments in Excel Far Away from Cell
2. Escape from Active Cell in Excel
If you are in editing mode in Excel, meaning your cursor is active in a cell then maximum commands of Excel won’t work. So for this reason, the Show Comments option can be grayed out. Have a look at the image below, all the comments options are grayed out including the Show Comments option.
Solution:
- Look, Cell C7 is active in our worksheet. Press the Esc button to release the cursor or click anywhere on the worksheet.
Now see, the options are available, click on the Show Comments option and it will work.
All the comments are now visible.
3. Restart, Reinstall or Update the Excel App
Sometimes comments don’t display properly if the Excel app is not started or installed properly. This creates a lot of issues. Or maybe your Excel version is too old. In this situation, the above two solutions won’t work. First, reopen your Excel app, if it doesn’t resolve the issue then reinstall or update the Excel app. If you are using a cracked version of Excel then it also may create a problem because the cracked version doesn’t work properly all the time, so try to use the genuine version. If these things fail to rescue you then let know your issue to Microsoft Support team by mailing them, and their expert team will solve the issue of your Excel app.
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You can download the free Excel workbook from here and practice independently.
Conclusion
That’s all for the article. I hope the procedures described above will be good enough to fix the problem when comments are not displaying properly in Excel. Feel free to ask any question in the comment section and please give me feedback.
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Just had the exact same issue on my Excel, with nothing working to fix it, when my colleague suggested me to copy/paste the cell to an adjacent empty cell. Voila, it worked, and then I simply dragged the copied cell to replace the one not working. Curiously enough, all other non-visible comments became visible after that, although displaced to a corner and compressed, so I had to expand them when editing. But no need to do anything else. Hope this helps if anyone else is still struggling with this annoyance!
Hello NYDA,
Thanks a lot for your suggestion. We worked on your suggestion but couldn’t find the exact reason for which your solution worked. We tried it on Excel 365, maybe it can be applicable to the earlier versions. So it would be great a favor for us if you would share your Excel version and the specific reason for the issue.
Thanks and regards,
Md. Sourov Hossain Mithun
Team ExcelDemy.