Yellow comment-bubbles invisible in Word

[paieye]

I am as usual doing some editing for writers that use Word, poor souls. I use the excellent "Comment"-feature in Nisus Writer Pro to do this. Some Word-users however, seem unable to see the yellow speech-bubbles. Why would that be ?

[martin]

That's unexpected. Comments created by Nisus Writer should be visible in Microsoft Word, including the "bubbles" you see applied to the marked text. I just did a quick test and this is working as expected.

A few quick questions:

1. What file format are you using to exchange documents with Word? We always recommend RTF for best fidelity though comments should transfer successfully with other formats too, like DOCX.

2. Are you absolutely sure your colleagues are opening your documents in Word? I ask because sometime inexperienced users will fail to notice that a file defaults to opening in WordPad, which doesn't support advanced content like comments. You might avoid this issue by using Save As to save your documents as .doc files, which are more likely to default to opening in Word instead of WordPad.

If you confirm that your files really are being opened in Word, and comments still aren't visible, it would help to know exactly what version of Word is being used.

[paieye]

Thank you for coming to my help. My correspondent is using MS Word 16. I at first sent my commented file to her in the '.doc' format. She could not see my comments. I have just now sent it in the '.rtf' format,' and she tried to open it using MS Word. She gets "MS Word experienced an error,etc." I have seen an earlier thread in which you and Hamid suggested using "Export as" to change to the Word binary format -- might that be relevant here ?

[martin]

Thank you for coming to my help. My correspondent is using MS Word 16. I at first sent my commented file to her in the '.doc' format. She could not see my comments. I have just now sent it in the '.rtf' format,' and she tried to open it using MS Word. She gets "MS Word experienced an error,etc."

Thank you for the additional information. That's very strange! Would you be able to share your original Nisus Writer document with me for testing? I'd like to investigate, to see if I have any trouble opening your file in Word. You could send me your file directly via email:

I have seen an earlier thread in which you and Hamid suggested using "Export as" to change to the Word binary format -- might that be relevant here ?

You can certainly give the Export As menu a try, using either of the binary ".doc" or DOCX file formats. Doing an export is less desirable than natively saving the file, due to potential fidelity issues, but it might be a good workflow in the meantime until we can figure out how else to help you.

[paieye]

Thank you again. I have just now sent you a sample file under the subject-line "Yellow comment-bubbles invisible in Word."

[martin]

Thank you for the sample file paieye. As I mentioned in my email reply to you a few days ago, the document checks out okay, and its comments displayed properly in Word. I sent you a few suggestions, like making sure your version of Nisus Writer is up-to-date. Please let us know if you need to continue to pursue this issue.

[paieye]

In response to your email-message, I have updated my Nisus Writer Pro, but this has made no difference. My correspondent is using MS Word 16.42. I shall not expect you to spend any more time on this, though I hope that, if and when I find how to get rid of this difficulty I may continue the thread. Meanwhile, thank you for all of the trouble that you have taken to help me.