There may be a time when you want to print a hard copy of your presentation and ask a
friend to look it over for you.
You could both write your comments in the margins and even compare it side by side with
an earlier draft.
Wouldn't it be easier if you could do that electronically?
In PowerPoint, you can—using two features called Comments and Compare.
Let’s go to the Review tab right away so I can show you what I mean.
Let's say I'm collaborating on this presentation with a couple coworkers, and I want to make
a suggestion about this slide without actually changing it.
I'll just add a comment instead by selecting the item I want to reference... and then clicking
the New Comment command.
Now you can easily type your question or comment.
I really do like this graphic.
When you're done, click anywhere outside the box or press Enter on your keyboard... and
the newly added comment will be represented by this little icon.
Any time you add or click on a comment, the comments pane will open on the right.
This allows you to see all the comments on your current slide in one convenient place.
Here we can see that someone also left a comment for us.
It's from the person who wrote the presentation.
I'm going to go ahead and respond, just by clicking where it says Reply.
See how they're sort of stacked on top of each other now?
It's just as easy to edit your comment if you make a mistake or think of something you
want to add.
All you have to do it click it in the right pane and start typing.
If you change your mind and want to delete a comment—like the first one here—that’s
not a problem.
Just make sure it's selected, then click the Delete command.
You can also go to the menu below... and delete all the comments on the slide or all the comments
in the presentation.
I think I'm getting the hang of this.
But I know we have one other person working on the presentation, and he's already saved
his own version with a couple minor changes.
We can decide whether to keep or discard those changes using a neat feature called Compare.
All you need is the presentation you have open... and then a copy that's been modified
in some way.
Click Merge... and PowerPoint combines and compares the two presentations to come up
with a list of changes that were made—that's over here on the Details tab.
This is still my copy, but now we have some comments from the other version too, and a
place to address the revisions.
Just click this icon anywhere it appears on your slide, and check the revisions you want
to keep.
I'm going to go ahead and accept them all.
When you're done, click the End Review command.
And take note of the fact that any unapplied changes will be discarded.
Now that you know how to use the Comment and Compare features, you can review and collaborate
on presentations without ever leaving PowerPoint.