Inserting Comments

OpenOffice.org 3 Writer Guide

Chapter 3: Working with Text

< Previous Section

Next Section >

• Selecting text
• Cutting, copying, and pasting text
• Finding and replacing text and formatting
• Inserting special characters
• Formatting paragraphs
• Formatting characters
• Autoformatting
• Creating numbered or bulleted lists
• Using footnotes and endnotes
• Checking spelling
• Using language tools
• Using the thesaurus
• Hyphenating words
• Using word completion
• Using AutoText
• Line numbering
• Undoing and redoing changes
• Tracking changes to a document
• Inserting notes
• Linking to another part of a document
• Working with hyperlinks
• Tips and tricks

< Previous Page

Next Page >

Writer provides another type of comments (formerly called “notes”),which authors and reviewers often use to exchange ideas, ask for suggestions, or brainstorm during the review process.

To insert a note in the text, place the cursor in the place the note refers to and select Insert > Comment or press Ctrl + Alt + C. The anchor point of the note is connected by a dotted line to a box on the right-hand side of the page where you can type the text of the note. OOo automatically adds at the bottom the author of the note as well as a time stamp indicating when the note was created. Below is an example of text with comments from two different authors.

Notes in OOo 3

Select Tools > Options > User Data to configure the name you want to appear in the Author field of the note, or to change it.

If more than one person edits the document, each author is automatically allocated a different background color.

Right-clicking on the comment pops up a menu where you can delete the current note, all the comments from the same author, or all the comments in the document. From this menu, you can also apply some basic formatting to the comment text. You can also change font type, size, and alignment from the main menu.

To navigate from one note to the other, open the Navigator (F5), expand the Comments section, and click on the note text to move the cursor to the anchor point of the note in the document. Right-click on the note to quickly edit or delete it.

You can also navigate the comments using the keyboard. Use Ctrl + Alt + Page Down to move to the next note and Ctrl + Alt + Page Up to move to the previous note.