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One of the benefits of using notes in Microsoft Excel is that you can easily reposition them in your spreadsheet to ensure they don’t obscure important data. However, their behavior when you resize cells or add and remove columns varies depending on the note’s settings.
Default Setting: Don’t Move or Size Notes With Cells
In this example, let’s say you want to add a note to cell B12. To do this, right-click the cell, and select “New Note.” Alternatively, select the cell, and press Shift+F2.
After you’ve typed your note and exit its editing mode, if youinsert a new columnto the right, by default, the note will stay in the same position—directly next to the cell to which it’s linked.
Tokeep all notes in your spreadsheet on show, in the Review tab on the ribbon, click Notes > Show All Notes.
However, if youincrease the height of all the rowsin the table, the note doesn’t adapt to this formatting change. As a result, the note is further away from its linked cell, and the spreadsheet looks untidy.
Yes, you could select the note and reposition it manually, but this would take too much time if your spreadsheet contains many notes.
Even though notes don’t adapt to cell sizes or positioning by default, theydostay with the relevant cells when you sort your data.
In a second example, you’ve decided to move the note to the right-hand side of your table so that it doesn’t cover any data.
However, when you add another column, the note remains fixed in its position, meaning it obscures the data in the right-most column.
To fix these issues, you can change the note’s properties.
Alternative Setting 1: Move Notes With Cells
Instead of moving notes manually when you add or remove columns or rows, you may adjust their properties.
Activate the note whose settings you want to change, either by clicking Notes > Show All Notes in the Review tab on the ribbon, or by right-clicking the relevant cell and selecting “Edit Note.” If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts, select the cell and press Shift+F2.
Then, right-click theedgeof the note, and click “Format Comment.”
If you click thecenterof the note, you won’t be able to access the relevant settings in the Format Comment dialog box that appears.
Then, in the Properties tab of the Format Comment dialog box, check “Move But Don’t Size With Cells,” and click “OK.”
Now, when you insert a new column, the note shifts to the right, meaning you can still see all the data in your table.
Also, if you change the height of the rows, the note will move accordingly so that it stays approximately in line with the cell to which it’s attached. Similarly, if you add a new row above, the note will move down.
Although notes move up and down when you add or remove new rows or change the row heights, this movement isn’t always proportional to the change you make due to automatic adjustment behaviors built into the program. As a result, the more rows you add or remove, or the bigger the change you make to the row heights, the further away from its original relative position it may move.
Another benefit of selecting “Move But Don’t Size With Cells” is that you can rest assured that the note’s size won’t change, even if the cell to which it’s linked grows or shrinks. This means that notes won’t dominate your spreadsheet’s real estate if you increase cell sizes or shrink if you decrease them.
Alternative Setting 2: Move and Size Notes With Cells
Another way to control how notes behave when you make changes to your spreadsheet’s layout is to force them to moveandsize with the cells.
Right-click the cell containing the note you want to change, and select “Edit Note.” Alternatively, select the relevant cell, and press Shift+F2.
Then, right-click the edge of the cell, and select “Format Comment.”
Next, open the “Properties” tab, check “Move And Size With Cells,” and click “OK.”
Now, not only will the note shift position when you add or remove columns or rows, but it’ll also grow and shrink if you change the size of the cell to which it’s linked.
In this example, when I increased the heights of the rows, the note also grew, maintaining the proportions within my worksheet.
That said, it’s worth bearing in mind that if a note contains lots of text, and you reduce the height of the row, some of the text may become hidden.
As well as adding simple annotations to cells through notes in Microsoft Excel, you can also add comments, which enable you to create conversation-style threads of collaborative annotations. To do this, select the relevant cell, open the “Review” tab on the ribbon, and click “New Comment.” However, while you can change the positions of notes, comments are always adjacent to the linked cell.
