When you are collaborating on a presentation, or even if someone else is designing slides for you -
you will want to give feedback without actually editing the slides themselves. Comments
are great for such scenarios - a Comment is a note that you can attach to any slide object or to a whole
slide. The ability to add comments into your
PowerPoint 2013 presentation enables you to
write important notes for particular slide object or for the slide and it is a great way to provide
feedback to others about their presentation. Once you add a comment, you can edit the comment and even get
replies for the comment.
Follow these steps to add, edit, or delete Comments:
- Open a presentation and navigate to the slide where you want to add a comment. In
Figure 1 you can see that a slide with a picture is selected.
Figure 1: Slide with picture selected
- Access the Review tab of the
Ribbon, and click the
New Comment button, as shown highlighted in red within
Figure 2.
Figure 2: New Comment button
- This adds a comment icon on the slide (highlighted in blue within
Figure 3) and opens the Comments
Task Pane (highlighted in
red within Figure 3).

Figure 3: Comment icon and Task Pane
- Now, within the Comments Task Pane, just type in your comment within the box, as
shown highlighted in red within Figure 4. Once done, press
Enter or click outside the comment box.

Figure 4: Type in the comments
- You can easily change the placement of the comment icon by just dragging the icon. In
Figure 5 you can see the comments icon is repositioned (compare comments icon placement
within Figure 3 above, highlighted in blue).

Figure 5: Comment icon repositioned
- To edit, reply, or delete the comment, click the comment icon to bring up the
Comments Task pane, as shown in Figure 6. To edit the comment, click
within the comment box (highlighted in red within Figure 6)
and make changes that you want. Then click outside the comment box to complete the changes. You can also
reply to a comment by clicking the Reply box (highlighted in
blue within Figure 6) - then type in your reply in the
text entry box, then press the Enter key to finish.

Figure 6: Editing and replying a comment
- To delete the comment, select the Review tab of the Ribbon - then, click the top half of Delete
button (highlighted in red within Figure 7). To be provided with more options, click the
lower half of the Delete button (highlighted in blue within Figure 7). This opens a drop-down menu (see Figure 7 again).

Figure 7: Delete drop-down menu
There are three options within the Delete button drop-down menu which are explained below:
Delete: Deletes the selected comment.
Delete All Comments and Ink on This Slide: Deletes all the comments
on the current slide.
Delete All Comments and Ink in This Presentation: Deletes all the comments within
the open presentation.
Alternatively, click the Delete icon within the Comments Task Pane (highlighted in green
within Figure 6, shown earlier on this page). Or right-click the comments icon on the
slide itself and from the resultant context menu, select the Delete Comment option, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: Delete Comment option
Note: Can't see the
Comment icon on the slide? Select the
Review tab of the
Ribbon and click the lower half of the
Show Comments button. From the resultant drop-down menu, select the
Show Markup
option (highlighted in
red within
Figure 9). This is a toggle option to hide/show the Comments icon. To
hide/show the
Comments Task Pane, click the upper half of the
Show Comments button or select/deselect the
Comments Pane option
(highlighted in
blue within
Figure 9).
Also note that when both the Comments icon and the
Comments Task Pane are visible - then if you click the
Show Markup option, both the Comments icon and the
Comments Task Pane will disappear. Thereafter, clicking the
same
Show Markup option again will bring back only the Comments icon.
Figure 9: Show Comments button
- There are more three buttons within the Comments Task Pane which are explained below
(as marked in Figure 6, earlier on this page):
A. New (Insert Comment): This button enables you to add new comment(s).
B. Previous: Use this button to go to previous comment(s). Previous
button can also be found within the Review tab (refer to Figure 7,
shown earlier on this page).
C. Next: Use this button to go to next comment(s). Next button can also
be found within the Review tab (refer to Figure 7, shown earlier on this page).
- Make sure to save your presentation so that all comments are saved.
See Also:
Add, Edit, or Delete Comments in PowerPoint
2011 for Mac
Add, Edit, or Delete Comments
in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
Commenting in PowerPoint Web App (OneDrive)