How to Get the Text from Notes (Comments)

I am trying to set up a macro that will save Notes (comments) that are in a worksheet, and then (after that worksheet is cleared and repopulated) restore those same Notes. This is necessary because the PayrollSheet has a column for each employee ID, and repopulating the sheet inserts new employee IDs, so Notes need to be restored based on the employee ID (which may be in a different column than it was previously).
Unfortunately, when I try to read / save the text for a Note, I get a 1004 runtime error.
Macro code I'm using is:

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The error 1004 occurs at the CommentsSheet.Cells(WriteRowC, CommentColC) = c.Comment.Text line. The two previous lines (which use the cell's column and row numbers) work fine, so c is referring to a specific cell (and when stepping through the code manually, it is indeed referring to a cell which has a Note attached).
Apparently, Comment.Text can be used to SET the text in a comment, but not to READ the text in a comment.
For clarification, I am referring to NOTES (which are called Comments in VBA), not to "COMMENTS" (which are called CommentsThreaded in VBA). Talk about confusing!!!
So, how can I READ (and save) the text in a Note / "Comment"?

Well, I created a sample file to post in here, and (lo and behold) the macro code works fine (with NO runtime error) in that sample file!
So I guess I will have to dig a little deeper to figure out what's going on in my main file.

RhiSJ, thanks for the suggestion, but there are not merged cells in the file I'm working with.

Here is the greatly simplified sample file, but as I noted, the macro works as expected in this file, while I still get the Error 1004 in the original file.

Can't upload the bad file, due to confidential data. I will have to peruse it on my own.

When I delete the sensitive data, I get the sample file (that works OK).

YES!!! That's the problem, I think. In the actual data, the comments are preceded by =====. THANKS for that insight!!!

Good idea! I will try that!