Skip to main content

Kutools for Office — One Suite. Five Tools. Get More Done.

How to remove timestamps from existing comments in Word document?

Author Siluvia Last modified

Normally, when inserting comment in Word document, a timestamp will be created automatically at the same time as below screenshot shown. Sometimes, you don’t want to display the timestamp of the comment, how can you remove it? This article will show you a method to deal with it.

Remove timestamps from existing comments in Word

Remove timestamps from existing comments in Word

Please do as follows to remove timestamps from existing comments in a Word document.

1. Open the folder contains the Word document which you will remove the timestamp from the existing comments.

2. Make sure the File name extensions box is checked, then, right click the file and select Rename option, change extension of the Word document from “.docx” to “.zip”, then press the Enter key. See screenshot:

File with extensions box checked, changing the extension from '.docx' to '.zip'

3. In the opening Rename prompt box, click the Yes button.

Confirmation dialog saying 'Are you sure to change it?'

4. Now the Word document is turned to a zip file as below screenshot shown, please unzip this file. In this case, I right click the zip file and select WinZip > Unzip to unzip the file.

Unzip option on the right-clicking menu

5. Then the file has been unzipped in current folder. You need to find and open a folder which named “word”, and open the comment.xml file and the document.xml file separately with the Notepad application. Please right click it, and then choose Open with > Notepad. See screenshot:

Open with Notepad option on the right-clicking menu

6. In the opening comments.xml – Notepad window, you need to:

  • 6.1) Press the Ctrl + F keys to open the Find dialog box;
  • 6.2) Enter "Your Name" w:date=" into the Find what box (here I enter “siluvia” w:date=”) and click the Find Next button.
  • 6.3）Then the searched result will be highlighted in the window, please replace the "Your Name" w:date=" with "Your Name" w:ignore=".
  • 6.4）Repeat the above two steps until all occurrences of "Your Name" w:date=" are changed to "Your Name" w:ignore=".
  • 6.5) Save and close the file. See screenshot:

Find dialog box

7. Repeat the step 6 to change all occurrences of "Your Name" w:date=" to "Your Name" w:ignore=" in the document.xml – notepad window.

8. Rezip all files and folders you have unzipped out in step 4. Now a new zip file is created as below screenshot shown.

New zip file in the folder

9. Convert the zip file to a Word document by changing the extension of the zip file to .docx. See screenshot.

Note: you can change the document name to the original one as you need.

Open the Word document, you can see all timestamps of existing comments are removed.

Timestamps of existing comments are removed

Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Word - Elevate Your Word Experience with Over 100 Remarkable Features!

🤖 Kutools AI Features: AI Assistant / Real-Time Assistant / Super Polish (Preserve Format) / Super Translate (Preserve Format) / AI Redaction / AI Proofread...

📘 Document Mastery: Split Pages / Merge Documents / Export Selection in Various Formats (PDF/TXT/DOC/HTML...) / Batch Convert to PDF...

✏ Contents Editing: Batch Find and Replace across Multiple Files / Resize All Pictures / Transpose Table Rows and Columns / Convert Table to Text...

🧹 Effortless Clean: Sweap away Extra Spaces / Section Breaks / Text Boxes / Hyperlinks / For more removing tools, head to the Remove group...

➕ Creative Inserts: Insert Thousand Separators / Check Boxes / Radio Buttons / QR Code / Barcode / Multiple Pictures / Discover more in the Insert group...

🔍 Precision Selections: Pinpoint Specific Pages / Tables / Shapes / Heading Paragraphs / Enhance navigation with more Select features...

⭐ Star Enhancements: Navigate to Any Location / Auto-Insert Repetitive Text / Toggle Between Document Windows / 11 Conversion Tools...

🌍 Supports 40+ Languages: Use Kutools in your preferred language – supports English, Spanish, German, French, Chinese, and 40+ others!

Kutools and Kutools Plus tabs on the Word Ribbon
👉 Want to try these features? Download Kutools for Word now! 🚀
 

✨ Kutools for Office – One Installation, Five Powerful Tools!

Includes Office Tab Pro · Kutools for Excel · Kutools for Outlook · Kutools for Word · Kutools for PowerPoint

📦 Get all 5 tools in one suite | 🔗 Seamless integration with Microsoft Office | ⚡ Save time and boost productivity instantly

Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Word - 100+ Tools for Word

Free Download Buy Now Learn More about Kutools