Change UserName in Excel Comments

When you insert a comment in Microsoft Excel, your user name is shown in bold at the top of the comment.

Perhaps your name has changed, or you’ve inherited a computer that has someone else’s name in it.

How can you change the name that appears when you add new Excel comments on a worksheet?

User Name in Excel Comment
User Name in Excel Comment

Change the User Information

NOTE: The User Name is common to all the Office applications, so if you change it in one program, all the others will be automatically updates.

I like to change the user information in Word or PowerPoint, because those programs store the user’s initials as well as the user name.

Excel just stores the user name, but you can change the name there, if you prefer.

  1. Open Microsoft Word
  2. Click on the Tools menu, then click Options.
  3. Click the User Information tab.
  4. Change the User Name and Initials
  5. Click the OK button, to close the dialog box.

Note: The revised information will be used in all of the Microsoft Office applications on your computer

Change the User Name and Initials
Change the User Name and Initials

Updating Old Comments In Excel

In Excel a comment shows the user name by default, at the top of the comment.

After the comment is created you can edit the comment, to change or delete that name.

Comment Name in Status Bar

The status bar also shows the user name when you point to a cell that contains a comment.

If you edit a comment or change a user name, the name in the status bar does NOT change.

The status bar continues to show the user name from the time that the comment was inserted.

Excel Macro to Replace Name

To change the name in the status bar, you can run an Excel VBA  macro, like the ChangeCommentName macro shown below.

  • NOTE: In the ChangeCommentName code, replace the text strings “New Name” and “Old Name” with the new and old user names on your computer.
strNew = "New Name"
strOld = "Old Name"

ChangeCommentName Macro Code

Store the following code in a regular code module in your Excel workbook. Run the macro when you need to change comment names.

Sub ChangeCommentName()
'replaces old names in comments
'deletes and reinserts comments
'  so new name appears in status bar
'www.contextures.com/xlcomments03.html
Dim ws As Worksheet
Dim cmt As Comment
Dim strOld As String
Dim strNew As String
Dim strComment As String
strNew = "New Name"
strOld = "Old Name"
Application.UserName = strNew
For Each ws In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
  For Each cmt In ws.Comments
    strComment = Replace(cmt.text, strOld, strNew)
    cmt.Delete
    cmt.Parent.AddComment text:=strComment
  Next cmt
Next ws

End Sub

Get the Excel Comment Workbook

To get the Excel sample file with several macros for working with Excel comments, go to the Excel Comment Macros page on my Contextures site.