There may be a time when you want to print a hard copy of a presentation and ask a friend
to look over it for you.
You could both write your comments in the margins, and even compare the print-out 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.
I'm going to 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 of coworkers, and I want to
make a suggestion about this slide without actually changing it.
I'll just add a comment by selecting the item I want to reference, and then clicking the
New Comment command.
Now 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
added comment will be represented by this small thumbnail.
Adding a new comment or clicking on a comment thumbnail will open the comments pane on the
right.
This allows you to see all of the comments on the slide.
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 to this directly 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 else.
Just click on the comment itself...
When you're finished, click anywhere on the slide... and the comment will update to show
any changes you made.
If you change your mind and want to delete a comment - like the first comment I made
- no problem...
Click here to open the Delete menu... and here you can delete all the comments on the
slide or you can delete 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 of 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 that 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, revise,
and collaborate with others all within PowerPoint.