Need to Delete Comments Fast

[binar]

Fellow Forum Members,
I have a 300 Page document going through a review process using the tools in
WORD's review toolbar. This document has had a lot of comments added to it
from five Engineers. I have been given the task to break this document into
it's three original parts (the Engineers made one WORD 2003 document of it
and this is unacceptable. The content needs to be in three different files in
specific chapters). In addition, the comments in each of the parts need to be
left intact. Therefore, copying and pasting to break up the document is not
possible because the comments don't carry over to a new file.

My only option is to select and delete what I don't want to break up the
pages. Selecting the pages and then deleting the content I don't want is a
nightmare. WORD really has made it difficult to delete groups of comments all
in one shot. It is a very excrutiating waiting process to delete 100 comments
all at once. WORD slows down so much that it's worse than watching paint dry.

How do I delete 50 pages and get the comments included within the 50 pages
to disappear together with the 50 pages? What WORD seems to be doing is
deleting all of the content within the 50 pages, but it leaves the comment
history for the 50 deleted pages behind as balloon comments. Then using the
Verify button to delete these unwanted comments is a royal pain. It is
extremely slow.

I would appreciate it very much if anyone can let me know how to delete
selected pages in a way that the comments are also included in the page
deletion. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[grammatim]

I don't know if this will work (if you'd asked this morning, I'd have
had a document whose comments needed to be deleted and I could have
tried it), but what if you select a stretch of text, and then use
Delete All Comments on the Reviewing toolbar? If it works like other
commands, it would affect only the comments within the selected part.

 

[binar]

Grammtim,
Thanks for your post. I have tried out what you are recommending and it
doesn't work. Selecting a stretch of text only selects the body text but not
include the comment balloons. The only way to select the comment balloon is
by clicking the the comment bar triangle or the comment bar itself. This
restricts one to select a single comment balloon at a time. If anyone else
out there knows of a way to select multiple comment balloons in a fast manner
please let me know.

 

[grammatim]

Did you try "Delete All Comments" even though the comment balloons
didn't change color?

How about showing the comments in a Comments Pane (as in Normal view)
instead of balloons -- can they be selected by dragging across them
(or with Ctrl-A)?

 

[Graham Mayor]

I am puzzled by this. What version of Word is it?

Comments are referenced to the text. If you copy and paste the text that
contains a comment, the comment and its balloon go with the copied text.
Similarly if you delete text that contains a comment, the text and the
associated comment are similarly deleted.

It seems that you are doing something different?

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

It doesn't make sense to me, either. I suspect Binar hasn't really tried
deleting the text. Copying/pasting is a bit more difficult, but Shauan's
article explains the procedure that needs to be used.

 

[binar]

Thanks to all who posted in this thread. I managed to get over this hump.
Deleting a multitude of comment balloons requires great patience. The
approach I found works out the best is to select all the pages you want
deleted. and delete them. After this is done you have to go back and delete
the comment balloons because they stay behind eventhough the pages have been
deleted. Deleting the comment balloons requires you select them by clicking

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I find it very hard to believe that the comment balloons persist when the
text to which they are attached is deleted. I'd be interested in seeing a
document in which this was the case.

 

[grammatim]

I find it works the other way -- when an author responds to a query in
a Comment balloon attached to a particular word, and the fix involves
deleting or replacing the anchor word, if I'm not very careful the
comment goes away, messing up the numbering of all the rest of the
comments. (Sometimes I do the comments from back to front, but that
doesn't work so well when a comment refers to an earlier one whose
answer I haven't gotten to yet.)