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When you add a comment to a cell, Excel automatically uses the Tahoma style font in size 9 on a PC, and size 10 on a Mac. You can change the formatting for a comment, and in Windows you can also or change the default format for all comments.

Note: In Excel for Microsoft 365, comments are now threaded, and allow you to have discussions with other people about the data. Notes are for making notes or annotations about your data, and work like comments in earlier versions of Excel. For more information, see this article on Threaded comments and notes.

  1. Select the text you want to reformat, right-click it, and then choose Format Comment.

    Format a comment by selecting the text to format, then right-click and select Format Comment.
  2. Choose the font options you want and click OK.

    Format Comment dialog, where you can choose font, style, size, color, and so on.
  3. In this example, we've changed the font style, size and color of the comment.

    Image of a comment that's been reformatted.

To use the same font formats for all comments, change the default font size options from your Windows settings. Use the following steps for the version of Windows on your computer.

Change default font for comments in Windows 10

In Windows 10, you can change the default font size for comments, however it will also change the size of items in the Office ribbon, web pages, and so on.

  1. Press the Start button, then select Settings > Ease of Access > Display.

  2. To make just the text on your screen larger, adjust the slider under Make text bigger. To make everything larger, including images and applications, choose an option from the drop-down menu under Make everything bigger.

    Note: The changed default formatting is applied only to new comments and doesn't change the format for existing comments.

Change default font for comments in Windows 8

In Windows 8, you can change the font size and make the comment text bold.

  1. Press the Windows key + M to go to your desktop.

  2. Right click on the desktop and choose Personalize.

  3. Click Display at the bottom left.

  4. Under Change only the text size, click the arrow and choose Tooltips. You can change the font size and make the text bold.

    Windows 8 ToolTips format settings
  5. Click Apply to accept the changes.

    Note: The changed default formatting is applied only to new comments and doesn't change the format for existing comments.

Change default font for comments in Windows 7

In Windows 7, you can change the comment text size and color.

  1. Press the Windows key + M to go to your desktop.

  2. Right click anywhere on the desktop and choose Personalize.

  3. Click Window Color and click Advanced appearance settings.

  4. In the Window Color and Appearance box, under Item, pick ToolTip from the list. Change the font and color setting, and click OK.

  5. Click Save Changes in the Window Color and Appearance window.

Note: The changed default formatting is applied only to new comments and doesn't change the format for existing comments.

  1. Select the text you want to reformat, right-click it, and then go to the Home tab, and change your font settings in the Font group.

Image of a Note on a Mac, displaying the Home tab for formatting the Note's text.

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