Copy Word comments to another document

Key points of this article

Word comments are attached to a certain paragraph of text. Directly selecting and copying the text usually does not include comments and needs to be processed separately.
When the number of comments is small, copying the comment content one by one and copying the original text to which it is anchored can preserve the context.
When you need to show the entire list of comments to others, exporting a marked-up PDF is more complete than pasting text.
The author and time of the annotation after pasting usually become ordinary text, and must be marked manually to avoid being pretentious.
After the copy is completed, check the location, content and file version, and confirm that they are correct before replacing the original.

You've just finished reviewing a contract or paper, written a dozen comments, and now you're bringing those comments into another revised manuscript. Many people subconsciously select and copy everything. As a result, they only get the main text, and the comments remain in the original document. This is because comments are review records attached to a certain paragraph of text. They do not belong to the text itself and need to be processed separately when copied.

This article is about copying, not adding or deleting comments. Below are several common practices, selected according to the number of annotations, reception methods and subsequent uses, and what verification needs to be done after pasting. After reading this, you will be able to decide which one you should use, and you will also know how to avoid losing the context of the annotation.

How to copy comments to another document? One sentence conclusion

Direct answer: If the number of comments is small, copy them one by one and paste them together with the original text where the comments are located; if you need to show the entire list to others, export a tagged PDF; if you just want to see what changes have been made between the two versions, use the comparison function.

your situation	Recommended practices	reason
I only have a few comments that I want to bring to the new manuscript.	Copy the comment content one by one, paste it into the target document and indicate the location	The quantity is small, manual processing is more direct, and you can choose as needed
Annotations should correspond to the location of the original text	Copy the entire text where the comment is located, with the comment content following it	The annotation is anchored to the text, and just copying the annotation will lose the context.
Need to send the entire list of comments to others	Export tagged version to PDF and send	The annotation content and page position are retained, and the recipient does not need to install Word
The content of the two documents is roughly the same	Use the comparison function of Word to generate differences, and then extract comments from the differences	Can intuitively see which paragraphs have been changed to avoid omissions
The target document should continue to be reviewed using Word	Create a new comment in the target document and paste the original content	The author and time of the original comment are usually not automatically migrated

Before you start: Confirm these points first

Spending two minutes to judge before taking action can save you a lot of detours.

Whether the annotation is attached to the original text. Each comment corresponds to a selected piece of text. If the original text has been changed later, the comments may point to content that no longer exists. Make sure it still exists before copying.
Whether the target document already has content. Place the pasted comment as close to the corresponding paragraph as possible, and indicate which paragraph it originally belongs to. If the order of paragraphs in the target manuscript has changed, align them first and then paste them.
Whether author and time need to be retained. After normal pasting, the author name and timestamp will usually disappear, leaving only the text. If the other party needs to trace back who made the comment, they must manually write it in the pasted content.
Whether the original file is a PDF. If the annotation only exists in the PDF, you can use the PDF editor in OmniDoc desktop to view the content and use the compare function to check the differences between the two PDFs. Word comments themselves still need to be processed as follows.
Whether to keep the original. Save a copy before copying to avoid overwriting the original while working on the destination file.

Steps to copy comments one by one

The following is a commonly used and easy-to-control method, suitable for situations where there are no more than a few dozen annotations.

Open the original document, switch to review view, and confirm that all comments are displayed and not hidden.
Open the review pane, which will list all comments in order for easy inspection one by one.
Starting from the first comment, select the text in the comment box and copy it.
Go back to the text, find the original text anchored by this comment, and copy this text as well.
Open the target document, paste the anchored original text first, then paste the annotation content, and indicate the author and time in parentheses, such as "(Zhang San, revision comments)".
Repeat steps 3 to 5 for the remaining comments, leaving blank lines between each to facilitate subsequent searches.
After pasting everything, save it as a new file. If you need Word's native comments, you can select the corresponding text in the target document, create a new comment, and paste the content into it.

If you are using the OmniDoc web editor UniDoc (app.unidoc.top), it supports Word-compatible editing and can be used to open .docx files and verify text content. You need to check whether the annotations are completely retained after conversion. Do not assume that they will be retained by default.

Check each item after completion

After pasting, don’t rush to send it. Please go through the form below.

Check items	How to see	What to do if there is a problem
Number of comments	Check the items one by one against the number of items in the original document review pane.	Missing items are added from the original document and marked on the list
anchor position	Whether each comment follows its corresponding original text paragraph	Adjust the order, or add a note before the annotation stating "for the following paragraphs."
Author and time	Check whether the information in parentheses matches the original annotation	Manual correction; if uncertain, clearly state "Author Not Recorded"
Text integrity	Whether long annotations are truncated during pasting	Go back to the original file and copy again, confirming that the entire segment has been brought over
File version	Whether the target file name indicates the version date	Save as a new version to avoid confusion with the old version

📊 Core Comparison

There are three common ways to bring comments to another document, each with its own choice.

Method	Suitable for the scene	Main limitations
Manually copy each item one by one	There are few annotations, requiring selection, rewriting, or reorganization	Time-consuming, and frequent annotations can easily lead to missing stamps
Export the marked PDF for redistribution	Organize a list and hand it to others to read	The recipient cannot directly continue editing the original annotation
Compare two documents	The content of both versions is roughly the same; I'd like to see where the changes are	What is shown is a difference in text, which cannot replace the annotation itself; manual comparison is still required

❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. Why didn't the annotations follow the text when copying the main text?

Comments are independent review notes attached to the selected text. Regular body text copying usually only includes text and formatting, and won't put comments together on the clipboard. You need to copy the annotation separately or export the marked version.

2. Can you export all annotations at once?

This can be achieved by printing a marked version or exporting it as a PDF. When exporting, select the option to include comment tags; the page edges will display the comment content. This approach is suitable for organizing into a list, but you can't keep the original annotations directly in another Word document.

3. Will the author and date of the annotations be retained after pasting?

Usually not. What is pasted in is plain text, and the author and time information will be lost. If you need to keep it, just write it manually in the pasted content, and the format can be unified as "Author, Date, Content."

4. What about handwritten annotations on scanned PDFs?

First, use OCR to convert the scanned copy into optional text. The PDF editor on the OmniDoc desktop supports OCR. Recognition results need to be checked item by item, especially names, numbers, and technical terms, which cannot be used directly as final content. Then, follow the steps above to organize it into the target document.

📝 Summary

To copy Word annotations to another document, the key is to first distinguish between annotations and the main text, then choose methods based on quantity and purpose. Copy each item and paste it together with the original text for control; export PDFs for distribution, compare functions for viewing changes. After pasting, check according to the checklist to avoid missing annotations or mixing up the details.

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