Formatting comments

Excel 2016 2013 2010 2007 2003
Like a regular text, the comment boxes can be formatted. Excel provides many formatting options and allows you to customize most aspects of its appearance, including color, border, and margins.
Examples of notes in Excel 365

Excel for Microsoft 365 has changed how you work with comments, and now they are called notes.

Notes indicator in Excel 365  -  Notes in cells are indicated as little red triangles. By default, notes are displayed in a rectangular box with a yellow background.
Comments indicator in Excel 365  -  Comments are distinguished by little purple comment indicators.

See How to hide/display note and comment indicators for more details.

You cannot change the format of comments because all comments are shown in the separate pane (like the one shown above) with threads or on the Comments pane:

No comments indicator in Excel 365

To format a note, do the following:

   1.   Right-click the cell with comment and choose Edit Note in the popup menu:

Edit Comment in popup menu Excel 365

   2.   Select the text in the note.

   3.   On the Home tab, use the commands in the Font and the Alignment groups to make changes to the note's appearance:

Text editing groups in Excel 365

   4.   For even more formatting options, right-click the note's border and choose Format Comment... from the shortcut menu:

Comment popup in Excel 365

   5.   In the Format Comment dialog box, change the note appearance, including color, border, and margins:

Format Comment in Excel 365

To display an image inside a note, follow next steps:

   1.   Right-click the note's border and choose Format Comment....

   2.   In the Format Comment dialog box, on the Colors and Lines tab, click the Color drop-down list and select Fill Effects:

Comment color in Excel 365

   3.   In the Fill Effects dialog box, on the Picture tab, click the Select Picture... button to specify an image file:

Fill Effects in Excel 365

See also Changing a comment shape.

See also this tip in French: Comment créer des commentaires avec un formatage différent.

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