In this post, we’re going to look at two key ways you can add extra information to your sheet, without affecting the format of your sheet: Notes and Comments.
Sometimes people confuse these, as they both give extra information in the cells, but there is a clear difference between the two.
The key difference is:
Notes are simply little text boxes added to the cell which just add extra information. These are viewed by hovering over the cell.
Comments are also little boxes that are added to the cell with extra information, but these are usually used to make a comment to someone requesting some kind of response. They also allow you to see who added the comment.
Adding notes
I use these to remind myself of extra information related to that cell. Let’s look at an example.
Here I have a teacher’s timetable and I want to remind myself of some information about her classes, for example, when they will finish.
1) Right-click on the cell you want to add the note in, and select “Insert note”.
2) A text box will appear. Type in the note you want, then click away from the box to add it.
3) As you can see a little black triangle in the top right-hand corner is now visible. This shows you that there is a note in that cell.
To view the note, just hover over the cell and the text box will appear.
Editing a note
To edit the note, just click inside the text box and type.
Deleting a note
To delete the note, right-click on the cell and select “Clear notes”.
Adding comments
1) Right-click on the cell you want to add the comment in and select “Comment”.
2) A text box will appear with your name.
3) Type in the comment you want and click on “Comment”.
As you can see a little yellow triangle in the top right-hand corner is now visible. This shows you that there is a comment in that cell.
To view the comment, just hover over the cell and the text box will appear. As you can see it also adds the time and date the comment was left.
As these are generally used to request a response. Other users of the sheet, will be able to read the comment and do one of two things, reply or mark the comment as resolved.
Replying to a comment
To reply to the comment, hover over the cell and click on the text box. A reply box will appear below, which you can type in.
Type in your reply and click on “reply”.
Resolving a comment
If you consider the comment is now resolved, then hover over the cell and click the “Resolve” button. This will remove the comment.
Editing a comment
To edit the note, bring up the note as described above, then click on the 3 dots. Then click on “Edit”.
Deleting a comment
To delete the note, bring up the note, click on the 3 dots, and click on “Delete”.
Comments – Tab info
When inserting a comment, apart from adding the small yellow triangle in the cell, it also adds a number in the sheet tab, which tells you the number of comments on that sheet, in this case, 1.
Clicking on the number in the tab, opens all the current comments on that sheet, which can be very useful if you have lots of comments on the sheet.
Assigning actions via comments
Clicking on the number in the You can take comments one stage further and direct them at certain people. To do so, insert a comment as before and then in the text box, type an @ or + sign. This will then look for people. Start typing either their name or email address and it will filter the list.
Once you’ve found the people you want, just click on them., opens all the current comments on that sheet, which can be very useful if you have lots of comments on the sheet.
Type the message you want to send them, although you could send it without a message. If it’s just to invite them to comment, click the Comment button. This will send them an email inviting them to comment. When they click on the link in the email, it will take them directly to the comment.
Alternatively, you can change the comment into an action. Click the “Assign to…” checkbox. Then click the Assign button.
This will assign the comment as a task to the person you’re sending it to.
As with the comment above, they will receive an email informing them that they have an action assigned to them. They can either open the action and go directly to it or they reply or resolve it using the new dynamic email functionality, which allows you to take action right within the email without having to leave Gmail.
At the bottom of the email we can see a reply box, resolve and open buttons. Here I’m going to reply “Great” and mark it as resolved by clicking “Resolve”.
This updates the email to reflect that the action is resolved.
If they have the Drive app on their phone, they will also receive a notification. In their Drive, next to the file, they will see a number in a circle, which shows they have an action item within that file.
Hovering over the circle, will show them the number of action items they have and allow them to click it to open the file and go straight to the action. In the event there are more than one, it goes to one of the actions.
They will see the action highlighted in blue, where they can respond and/or mark the action as completed by clicking on the tick.
Copying comments to a copied document
If you want to make a copy of a document, it’s now possible to copy the comments from the original document. Go to File > Make a copy…
In the dialogue box, if you want to copy the comments, tick the “Copy comments” box and all the comments will be copied to the new document.
So, in summary, generally I use notes for just adding extra information to a cell and I use comments when I expect a response from someone.
This post is taken from my book “Beginner’s Guide to Google Sheets“, available on Amazon here.
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