How to Activate the Default Reviewing Pane in Word?

When you’re working on a document, the latest Word iteration gives you the ability to enter a comment via the Reviewing Pane. However, certain Word versions will have this feature disable by default, and with the latest UI changes, it can be confusing to figure out how to activate the default reviewing pane behavior in WOrd.

If you just want to view your comments, you can do this in two ways:

By using the Reviewing Pane.
By using the ballons on the right side of your document.

While the ballon method doesn’t require you to enable anything, the first method (using the Reviewing Pane) will require you to take a trip into Word’s settings and configure the behavior of the Reviewing Pane from the Review tab.

If you’re looking for instructions on enabling the Reviewing Pane on your Word installation, follow the steps below:

Open Word and load up the document that you’re currently working on.
Next, click on Review from the ribbon bar at the top.
From the dedicated Review bar, click on the down arrow associated with Reviewing Pane and select an appropriate behavior for the Reviewing Pane – vertical or horizontal.

Changing the behavior of reviewing pane

Note: The best course of action here is entirely dependent on your workflow, but we found the vertical option to be much easier to use.
After you enable the Reviewing pane, you should see it appearing on the left side or bottom section of the screen (depending on your choice).

Making the Reviewing pane visible

After you enable the reviewing pane, you can make any comments inside as desired. When you are done with it, you can safely close the Reviewing Pane by clicking on the Reviewing Pane tool once again.

You also have the option to adjust the size and the position of the Reviewing Pane by clicking on the drop-down arrow that you’ll find on top of the Reviewing pane.