Applying a comment to the text it refers to

What this does

You have a comment like "shorter please, and drop the conditional" on a passage. Instead of rewriting the passage yourself, you have the comment applied: the model gets the commented text and the comment text and carries out the one on the other.

This works for other people's comments as much as your own.

The four entries

Task menu ▸ Improve

• Apply Comment – changes only the passage the comment is anchored to.
• Apply Comment to Para – changes the whole paragraph the anchored passage sits in.
• Apply Comment (Edit) and Apply Comment to Para (Edit) – the same, but you can supply your own merge instruction first.

Use the paragraph variant when the comment points at a single word but means the whole thought. Otherwise the model fiddles with a word where the sentence was meant.

How to do it

1. Click into the comment balloon, or onto the commented text in the document.
2. Invoke one of the four entries.

If the add-in finds no comment at the cursor position it says: "This command only works when the cursor is inside a comment balloon or on text that has a comment." An empty comment is rejected too.

If you select part of the comment inside the balloon, only that part is applied. Otherwise the whole comment text is. Handy when one comment contains several points and you want to work through them one at a time.

The markup question

Before running, the add-in asks how the change should be shown – Word, Diff, Diff Window, Regex or None. Your configured choice is preselected.

• Word – tracked changes as you know them from Word. You accept or reject individually.
• Diff and Diff Window – show old and new side by side.
• None – the text is replaced directly.

For other people's comments, Word is the sensible choice: you see what somebody's comment made of your text before it stands.

The comment stays

The feature carries the comment out; it does not delete it. That is deliberate – you are meant to check first. If the result is right, remove the comment through Word as usual.

When the result misses the mark

Usually it is the comment itself. "This is unclear" does not tell the model what is unclear about it. For terse or ambiguous comments, take the (Edit) variant and write what was meant into the instruction.