Adding Comments

You can attach a comment to almost anything in Numbers: a cell, a chart, a text box, specific text inside a container, or the sheet itself. You can make notes for yourself, or to colleagues sharing the file. Comments are time- and date-stamped, and color coded to each user of a document. In this chapter, after you see how to set up your author name and comment color, you’ll learn how to Create Comments and then how to View and Edit Comments.

Set Comment Options

All comments by a user—both their markers on objects and the notes themselves—are the same color, but you can choose the color and the font size for the text. You can also—and should—set an author name if you’re writing comments for anyone other than yourself. (Tip: “She Who Must Be Obeyed” is too long to fit in most comment headers. Ask me how I know.) You can set your:

• Author name: Go to the General pane of Numbers > Preferences, and enter the author’s name.

  Changes to this setting and to text size—since they are both in Numbers’ Preferences—are retroactive not only for the current document, but for any document you open after changing them.

• Text size: Also in the General preference pane, choose a size from the Text Size pop-up menu.

• Comment color: Choose a color from View > Comments > Author Color. The color (from a limited selection of not particularly attractive options) is applied to all of a specific author’s comments in the document, across all its tabs.

Create Comments

It’s not always obvious what elements can hold comments. You can add a comment to:

• A table cell: You can’t add a comment to the table itself, but you can add one in any cell, and in as many cells as you want. A commented cell has a triangular marker in its upper right.

• A chart: Select the entire chart, or any element within it; the comment is attached to the chart as a whole no matter what’s selected when you create it.
• A text box or shape: Select the box or shape, not the text within it, to create an overall comment, because you can also attach a comment to…
• Text within a text box or shape: Select any portion of the text and attach a comment; the text is highlighted with the comment color. You can add multiple comments within the same text container; each gets a square marker (but not a border) at the left of the object.
• Media: Select the image, video, or sound icon.
• A sheet: Deselect everything with a click on an empty spot on the sheet; when nothing else is selected, the sheet becomes the “target” for a comment. You can add multiple sheet comments; none of them can be ignored, since a sheet comment never shrinks down to a neat little flag or appears as a popover.

  It’s not obvious how to move or resize these rather intrusive sheet-wide Post-it type comments, but if you hover around any edge of a note, you’ll get a resize cursor. And, if you point anywhere along the top where the author name and date are, you’ll get the standard pointer arrow, which means you can start dragging.

To create a comment:

1. Select or click in an “eligible” element and then click the Comment button on the toolbar or choose Insert > Comment. If they’re dimmed, the selected item doesn’t accommodate a comment.
2. Type your note in the comment popover that opens (Figure 153).

   

3. Close the note by pressing Command-Return or Esc, or by clicking anywhere outside it.

A commented object is flagged with a marker-topped border on its left edge, as shown in Figure 154. Commented elements within an object, such as cells in a table or text in a container, get individual markers.

View and Edit Comments

You’ll find handling comments a cinch:

• Open a comment: Hover over a commented object until the popover opens; you don’t have to hover over the actual comment marker. For text containers with multiple notes, point to highlighted text for its comment, or to non-highlighted text to see the container’s comment. In a table, point to specific commented cells.
• Edit a comment: Open the popover and click in it.
• Delete a comment: Open the comment and click Delete.
• Delete all text comments inside an object: This is mostly for use in shapes that hold text. Select the text object and choose Edit > Remove Highlights and Comments. Any comments for the object itself are unaffected.
• Move from one comment to another: With any comment open, click the Next or Previous arrow in its lower-right corner. This cycles through all the comments in the spreadsheet, even jumping to other tabs.