Comments are a very useful feature in Excel especially if the spreadsheet is being viewed by a number of people. They are a way of informing people of specific formulas or tasks.  For example you might have a cell which contains a certain date, you can add a comment explaining what this date is, or how you arrive at this date etc.

*Quick Tip –  to quickly insert or edit a comment just press Shift + F2

This short guide will show you how to display comments.

But first, how do you know if a comment is actually in a worksheet to begin with?  If you see a red triangle in the top right corner of a cell, this means there is a comment attached to that particular cell. So in the example below, cell B4 contains a comment…

If you hover over that cell, a comment/text box will appear telling you the name of the author of the comment and the actual text itself…

By default the actual comment text box is hidden, if you want to keep the comments displayed on the screen there are several ways to do this…

Version 2003

Method 1) Right click on the cell that contains the comment and choose Show/Hide Comments…

Method 2) Click on View in the toolbar and choose Comments…

To hide the comment, just repeat either of the above methods.

Version 2007 & 2010

Method 1) Right click on the cell that contains the comment and choose Show/Hide Comments…

Method 2) Go to the Review tab on the ribbon and choose either Show/Hide Comment (for that particular cell) or Show All Comments…

Again to hide the comments, just repeat either of the above methods.  And that’s it, quick & easy ways to display comments in Excel 🙂