Add comments and highlight text

You and anyone you collaborate with can add comments to text, objects, charts, table cells, and spreadsheets. Comments are useful for making notes to yourself, asking questions of reviewers, conveying editorial suggestions, and so on.

You can also highlight text and then comment on it.

When you don’t want comments and highlights to be visible, you can hide them.

Add a comment

Commented text uses a color unique to the comment’s author. Objects and table cells with comments have a comment marker.

Select text, click an object, or click an empty area of the sheet.
Click Comment in the toolbar, enter your comment, then click outside the comment to finish.

To read a comment, click it. To remove the comment, click Delete in the comment.

Comments you add directly to the sheet are always open.

Set the author name and comment color

Choose Numbers > Preferences (from the Numbers menu at the top of your computer screen), then click General.
Enter a name in the Author field, then close the window.
To change the color, choose View > Comments > Author Color (from the View menu at the top of your computer screen), then choose a color.

Highlight text

You can highlight text in text boxes and shapes, then add comments to it. You can’t highlight text in tables, but you can add comments to table cells.

Select the text, then choose Insert > Highlight (from the Insert menu at the top of your computer screen).
To add a comment, click the text and type a comment.

To remove the highlight, select the text, then choose Edit > Remove Highlights and Comments (from the Edit menu at the top of your computer screen).

If the Highlight option isn’t available in the Insert menu, make sure some text is selected.

Show or hide comments

Click View in the toolbar, then choose either Show Comments or Hide Comments.