Question re anonymizing 'comments' in a Word document

[overedge]

Yes, I have Googled this before asking here but I haven't found a clear answer.

I have a Word document with review comments on it. I'm not the author of the original document. There are comments on the document from a reviewer (not me and not the authors). The reviewer's name is on the comments they made, and I want to send the document back to the authors with the reviewer's name deleted from the comments. Right now I am creating new comment balloons with my name on them, cutting and pasting the text of the reviewer's comments into those, and then deleting the reviewer's original comment.

Is there a more efficient way to do this? Some of the online suggestions including deleting all the identifying information in the document using the "Properties" menu, but that doesn't seem to remove the reviewer's name from the comment balloons.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Japanfan]

The only thing that comes to mind is having the reviewer change her/his user name to ___ in Options, which should change the name attached to comments, and resend the document to you. At least, I think the username entered under General Options is the one that is automatically attached to comments. I remember having to change my name to 'editor' on one occasion, don't remember why.

I am not familiar with the Properties menu.

That's a very tedious process, @overedge. Good luck.

 

[TygerLily]

Are you still working on this? I had to do this a while ago, and my partner found an easier way. I can't recall the method off-hand and don't have Word anymore to try to remember, so would have to ask him tomorrow night at the earliest.

Edit: I can't remember whether this is what I did, but looks possible? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qMcFJgcig

Written instructions are here & based on the video, you'd be checking off "Document properties and personal information"

 

[overedge]

Are you still working on this? I had to do this a while ago, and my partner found an easier way. I can't recall the method off-hand and don't have Word anymore to try to remember, so would have to ask him tomorrow night at the earliest.

Edit: I can't remember whether this is what I did, but looks possible? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qMcFJgcig

Written instructions are here & based on the video, you'd be checking off "Document properties and personal information"

Thank you so much @TygerLily ! This is what I needed to know. After I returned to the document the original name still showed, but the video says saving a new copy of the document will save the comments with "Author" instead of the name. I ended up cutting and pasting the comments into new balloons, but I'll test this out so that I can use it next time.

 

[TygerLily]

That part of the video was really illuminating. It's not intuitive at all that the change wouldn't appear immediately.