Is there any way to delete a comment in Word without deleting its replies?

I'm responsible for combining edits to a document from a number of coauthors, accepting or rejecting any changes (and deleting any comments) that don't require further discussion, and recirculating a version with only those comments and tracked changes that either still require discussion or identify something that someone else still needs to do.

In a number of places, there is a comment that has been resolved, but that is followed by a string of replies (often of an "oh, and also" sort), one or more of which has not. I therefore want to be able to delete the original comment (and any replies that have also been resolved), but not delete the reply or replies that still need to be addressed. But when I try to delete the original comment, it automatically deletes all of the replies as well.

I could copy the relevant material into another comment, but in some cases, the reply that I want to preserve was made by a different author, and while I could simply preface it with "Name Lastname said:", that seems awkward. I'm also aware that I could unzip the docx file, manually edit the relevant XML file, and rezip it . . . but that's a pain, and has the potential to introduce subtle errors that don't immediately corrupt the file, but it set it up for corruption later.

Is there any way to do the thing that I'm trying to do, turning a reply by Name Lastname into a top-level comment by Name Lastname (presumably anchored to whatever text the original top-level comment was anchored to), without having to resort to awkward workarounds or direct edits to XML files?

posted over 3 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Chris Henry‭

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