Suggesting like a pro

In November my employer hosted a "State of the firm" meeting. They took the opportunity to show partners how easy it is to revise any kind of document in Google Workspace. Especially those documents with 120 pages that get emailed and printed several times, in multiple copies and versions...

Working with the team, I found a couple of surprises with comments that might interest you. Let the nerdiness begin.

Visiting the future was never easier

Mobile

You can deal with comments without entering the "edit" or "comment" mode. Just open the document and cycle through comments and suggestions.
The iOS version lacks behind the Android version at the moment. While Android will show you suggested edits like the web version (you see what was edited), the iOS version will only show you that there are edits. Both versions let you step through the edits sequentially and deal with them (accept/reject).

The Android version used to be like this, so stay tuned, iOS users!

Comments and suggestions

You can copy links to comments. If you send this link to somebody, they will focus on the specific comment. Check out other items you can link to.
Viewers cannot see comments or suggestions. This is very powerful! Suppose you have a very popular document that people are already looking at and your team needs to make edits. You can leave all the edits in suggestion mode and then accept them all at once. People will only see nice, polished edits once you are done.
You can easily cycle through all suggested edits under Tools > Review suggested edits. It allows you to preview with/without suggestions and accept/reject all at once.

Printing

Comments cannot be printed.
Any suggested edits you see will be printed:
- If you see suggested edits, they will be treated as "accepted" for printing purposes.
- If you cannot see edits (viewing mode), they will be treated as if all edits had been declined.

History

Comments are independent of the version history and not tracked in the version history.

They are independent objects, tied to the document.

Restoring a previous version will not influence comments - although the word/image they are referring to may be invisible now.
Comments have no editing history. You cannot undo edits or deletions.

Your's truly inspecting the neighbours

iOS: Real suggestion mode coming soon!

Advanced nerdiness: Up your commenting game

What you can comment on

Like a sprayer looking for fresh-painted walls, you can comment on a lot of things.

You can comment on the document, on other comments (respond), on suggested edits.
- Commenting on (your own) suggestions is a great way to explain why you are doing what you are doing.
- Only Docs has a suggestion mode, unfortunately, but most editors support commenting: Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drawings.
You can comment on non-Google files too:
- Comments in MS Office files can be read by people using Office. You can also read (and resolve) comments encountered in Office files. (Google Workspace playing nice)
- Comments in PDFs and images can be read by Acrobat and image editors.

In the Drive Viewer ("preview"), click the "Comment" icon to insert comments. You can assign tasks etc. just like in Drive.

Files with comments

You can copy documents and include the comments (File -> copy document -> copy comments). Unless you know what you're doing, I'd advise you to not use this feature.
When you import/convert an MS Office document containing comments, they carry over. Those will show as "everybody's todos" (remember you can see all your open action items in Drive)

This was the last commenting/suggesting post for a while, promise. I hope you liked it though - it certainly gives you bragging rights and makes your whole team more agile. That's what the Underground Change Movement is all about. Go show them! And thanks for reading.

#docsPublished 2019-01-31 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2022-10-29 by Holger Matthies.Written listening to Bebe Rexha - The way I are (dance with somebody).

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