SmartComment - Efficient Comment Entry

A Free Document Productivity Tool For Word

SmartComment allows you to quickly enter comments and to reuse those you have already entered

I use SmartComment when giving feedback to others, often I want to refer to the text in the comment, and frequently reuse comments I have already given in other places in the document

Using SmartComment

You select the text that the comment  and then press the SmartComment shortcut key. I use "Control+]" as the shortcut. 

 So far this is fairly standard functionality. 

You can also place the cursor on a given word, the SmartComment will select the entire word for the comment.

When you press the shortcut key again, SmartComment inserts the page number and text you highlighted. 
This forms the basis of your comment.
  

The cursor is positioned to add more text.

Reusing Earlier Comments

If you press the shortcut key again, 

you get a list of the previous comments you have entered.  

The selected comment will be entered, and the cursor positioned for minor corrections or additional text.

Only your own comments are used, those entered by others are ignored.

Th allows you to reuse comments.

 The dashed line shows the position of the cursor in the document and the comments are presented in the order they appear in the document.

If the comment is long, only the first part of the comment is shown and the remainder of the text indicated by the "...." characters

If there are lots of comments, the amount of text is reduced even further.

Using the filter

SmartComment has a filter function that lets you narrow quickly locate a prior comment by entering a key word or phrase. The list of comments to select from is reduced, and if there is only one comment with the filter value, it will be inserted automatically.

When you have a blank comment, you can type in a filter value. Only those comments you entered with that value in it are presented.

 If only one comment has "editor" then

Then it is inserted for you automatically.

SmartComment Delete

SmartComment Delete quickly removes comments. Just place the cursor in the l
ine containing the comment and hit the shortcut key "Control+Shift+]". the comment in that line is deleted and the text it was attached to is selected, ready for further editing.  You can use the SmartComment Delete shortcut inside a comment too.

Inspiration

I often have to give feedback and usually there is a need to reuse earlier comments. My first attempt at reuse was based on a set of standard comments that I could add to if needed. I found I never used the standard comments so I settled on resuse of comments I had already entered, and found this much more effective. Building a routine to find the ones entered, and to provide a pointer to the current location turned out to be an interesting exercise in array use, especially when I put a filter concept in.

I also found that I would often like to refer to the selected text inside the comment body, so added this as the default option, with the reuse of existing comments just one more keystroke away.

The Downloads tab contains a copy of SmartComment. There is more information on how it works in the release notes.