One of the more interesting features of Google docs is the ability to share your work with others, often while still in progress. By giving others certain permissions, they can actually interject their thoughts and questions directly into the work process. Your work partners are able to see, comment on, and even edit the work in a doc. This is invaluable for working teams who are separated by distance and/or time.
Table of Contents
- What are comments in Google docs?
- Hiding comments in Google Docs
- Enabling and disabling comments
- How to add comments in Google Docs
- How to edit comments in Google Docs
- How to show resolved comments in Google Docs
- Conclusions
What are comments in Google docs?
Google docs are excellent passive communication devices. If you’re reviewing a document or working on a project with others, you’re able to highlight certain text or images and ask questions or comment on what you’re seeing, maybe to give some suggestions for a review. These real-time comments and questions help the work process go faster and smoother, as all the concerns of your team can be recorded and addressed, as needed.
Hiding comments in Google Docs
Although you can change the ways in which you view a document, you’re not really able to completely hide or remove comments. You can change your view of the document by finding the view drop-down menu and then the mode choice in the Google doc toolbar. Here you’ll find three options; editing, suggesting, and viewing.
We’ll come back to editing and suggesting later.
With viewing, you see the document as it will appear when printed or finalized. This, in essence, hides all the comments, but they are not gone completely. You’ll be able to retrieve them by opening comment history.
Enabling and disabling comments
Sometimes you’ll want to see comments from your team, and other times you may need them to be on hold for a while. Enabling and disabling comments allows you the option to make these choices. Start by clicking the blue share button in the upper right-hand corner of the doc. A pop-up window will appear, which gives you options for who you’ll allow to see, comment on, and edit the doc.
As you see above, you can copy a link to your document and share access with anyone you send the link to. You can also choose certain people to have access to your document.
If you decide to disable comments, you can change the permissions of those you’re sharing the document with. By making others viewer only, they can look, but can’t comment. You can also delete individuals from having permission on your document. They won’t be able to view your documents at all if they’re deleted from your permission list.
How to add comments in Google Docs
You can add standard comments to your Google doc in a few ways. When you highlight a section in a document to comment on, you’ll be given two small icons, one blue and one green. Click the blue icon to add a comment.
You can also highlight an area to comment on and press option+command+M and a comment box will appear.
The third option is to use the drop down toolbar menu in Google docs. Find the insert tab and then look for comments menu item at the bottom of the list.
How to edit comments in Google Docs
The editing comments feature can be used to answer and resolve questions, ask follow-up questions, or change original comments to reflect new information. When a comment is present in the doc, find the three dots in the corner of the comment box and click it. You’ll be shown a pop-up menu with the options for edit, delete, or link to this comment.
- Click edit and you’ll be able to edit the comment.
- Click delete and you can remove your comment.
- Click link to this comment and you’ll be given a link address to copy and share.
How to show resolved comments in Google Docs
Once a comment is answered or resolved, it will be stored in comment history. To show a resolved comment, you’ll want to open up the comment history box. There are two ways to do this.
1. Find the black and white talk bubble icon in the upper right-hand corner of the Google doc. It’s very close to the blue Share button. Click it, and you’ll be shown all the resolved comments.
2. You can also press command+option+shift+A to have the comment history open up. Either option gives you the same view.
Reviewing comments can be helpful for planning future projects. Resolved comments can help guide document creation, vocabulary choices, image placement, or other style elements.
Conclusions
Now you should know a lot more about adding comments to documents, hiding them, and managing in general. Comments are a great collaboration feature, and they are present in other Google Drive apps like Google Sheets or Google Slides.