Why have Microsoft removed numbered comments from Word 2013?

On the whole, I’m quite fan of the latest version of Microsoft Office – Office 365. There are some features which are genuinely useful and which represent a significant improvement to those found in earlier versions of office.

One such feature is the ‘Simple Markup’ view in tracked changes. This can make navigating a document littered with countless tracked changes much easier and is a nice halfway house between the previous view options of essentially all or nothing.

Sometimes, though, Microsoft makes crazy retrogressive steps by removing useful functionality. I don’t know whether this is in a bid to simplify a complicated product, that they’ve got sick of a particular bit of code or whether it stems from some misguided focus group reporting it should be removed on the grounds of obsolescence.

A prime example of this is the removal of self-numbering comment balloons from Word 2013. Oh yes. With previous versions of Word, inserting a comment balloon would automatically prefix it with the author’s initials, followed by a number (starting, funnily enough, at one).

^{How things used to be…}

In the latest version of Word, however, only the author’s name appears.  That makes referring to specific comments made by the same author rather tricky.

For lawyers, self-numbering comments were really useful and saved heaps of time when referring back to specific comments within a document. Yes, it’s true that you can use the numbering function to insert numbers manually, but it’s a poor substitute.  And having to waste time adding the numbers manually really grates on me.

So, please, Microsoft… bring back self-numbering comments to Word.

Pretty please….?

Or should I dust off that copy of WordPerfect again?