If you have been asked to review someone else’s presentation, one of the easiest ways of doing this is to add comments. Previous versions of PowerPoint allowed you to do this but PowerPoint 2013 has enhanced the comment functionality with a dedicated comments task pane and the ability to reply to comments.
You can either add a comment to a slide or to a specific object/piece of content within the slide.
If you want to add a comment to a specific object in a slide, select that first, otherwise just click the New Comment button on the Ribbon’s Review tab.
The comments task pane appears to the right of your slide: here you can enter your comment.
If the comment is associated with a particular object in the slide a speech bubble will appear next to it, as shown below. Comments that refer to the slide in general are also represented by a speech bubble, but these appear top left of the slide.
Click on a speech bubble to re-open the comments task pane if you have closed it down.
Reply to Comments
You can also reply to other peoples’ comments. Underneath a comment you will see a reply box – type your reply here.
Processing Comments
If you are the owner of the presentation at some point you will need to review comments: use the Next and Previous buttons on the comments task pane to move between them. To delete, click on the cross that appears top right of the comment.
Printing Comments
To print comments select the File tab on the Ribbon, choose Print in the menu and then under settings click the menu that says Full Page Slides. Make sure Print Comments and Ink Markup is ticked in the menu.
Indicators for the comments are shown in the print preview. Each comment has a code which cross-references the comment content printed on a separate slide.