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?
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.
- Open Microsoft Word
- Click on the Tools menu, then click Options.
- Click the User Information tab.
- Change the User Name and Initials
- 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
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.