How to add comments to an Excel Worksheet cell

Posted on April 6, 2008 at 5:34 am

I’m a big user of Excel and it always amazes me how few people add comments to their Excel spreadsheets! Adding and using comments in Excel is a great way to explain formulas, cells, and other data in the spreadsheet itself, thus saving you the time spent on the phone with colleagues! It’s really easy to add comments to cells in Excel and I’ll explain how you can do so in Excel XP/2003 and Excel 2007.

Comments are basically notes that can be inserted into any cell in Excel. It’s useful for reminders, notes for others, and for cross-referencing other workbooks.

How to add comments to a cell in Excel 2007

The first thing you’ll want to do is click on the cell where you want to insert the comment. In Excel 2007, you can add comments to a worksheet by going to the Review tab in the ribbon bar.

In the Comments group, click on New Comment. In the Excel spreadsheet a comment text box will appear where you can type in your new comment.

Type in your comment and click outside of the text box when you are done. You’ll notice that there is a small red arrow at the top right of the cell, indicating that this cell has a comment. Clicking on the cell automatically brings up the comment.

How to add comments to a worksheet in Excel XP/2003

In Excel 2003 and XP, you have a couple of more options for inserting comments into a cell since there is no ribbon bar. You can use the menus at the top, the mouse context-menu or the reviewing toolbar.

Add Comments Using Menu Bar

First, you need to click on the cell that you want to insert the comment into. Then click on the Insert menu option and choose Comment.

Just like in 2007, a text box will appear next to the cell where you can enter your comment. Also, a red triangle appears at the upper right hand corner of the cell.

Add Comments Using Mouse Context Menu

Another simple, yet nifty way to insert a comment into an Excel cell is to simply right-click on the cell and choose Insert Comment. This actually works in both Excel 2007 and Excel 2003.

Add Comments Using Reviewing Toolbar

Finally, you can use the Reviewing toolbar in Excel to add comments to cells. To open the Reviewing toolbar, go to View, Toolbars, and choose Reviewing.

The first icon on the far left is the New Comment button. Click on it and a new comment box will appear in the currently selected cell.

That’s it! You can also check out other options on the Reviewing toolbar to display/hide comment, delete comments, print comments and more. Have a question about comments, post a comment! Enjoy!

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