Excel 2010 turns comments into unreadable arrow shapes - how to fix?

[danstelter]

Hey everyone -

Look, I'm a minimalist. So, I only change when I have to. I'm still running Office 2010. Excel 2010 changes comments into odd arrow shapes, without me doing anything to cause it (see attached). I've got dozens of comments it's done this to. It does so for 2 reasons:

1) Randomly, and usually after several weeks/months of using the file. I use Excel 2010 the whole time.
2) I recently rented a laptop while my business laptop went in for repairs. Using Excel 2016 and saving the file in the exact same format, but with Excel 2016, transformed all comments into these goofy, unreadable shapes.

Now, I can copy and paste the data, delete the comment, and then paste the data in to fix. But obviously, that's not a good use of my time. So:

1) Is there a quick simple fix to this?
2) Can I do anything to prevent it?

Thanks for your help,

Dan

[AliGW]

Minimalist answer:

Options | Advanced | Display - tell Excel not to show the comment indicators.

[danstelter]

Thanks, but that hides the comment itself too. I need to see the text. Any easy way to keep the comments so I can see the text also?

Dan

[AliGW]

Those are the options you have - that's it.

[danstelter]

Okay. That's fine if that's the way it is. Do you know why this happens?

[davesexcel]

This is not an uncommon question. Something to do with the cloud or something to that effect.


Here's something I wrote, I just select all the cells and Hit F5=>special cells, and selected comments, then looped through the comments, saved the text, deleted comment and added a comment again with the saved text.
Preliminary Test worked.

Sub FindComments()

    Dim r As Range, c As Range
    Dim s As String

    Set r = Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeComments)
    For Each c In r.Cells
        s = c.Comment.Text
        MsgBox s
        c.Comment.Delete
        c.AddComment
        c.Comment.Text s
        c.Comment.Visible = False
    Next c
End Sub

Note: you can get rid of the msgbox line, I was just testing it out.