How to Check for Comments on Your Essay in

Office Live Workspace

Ed McCorduckCPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on ComputerSUNY Cortland http://mccorduck.cortland.edu

slide 2: going to your group’s Workspace to retrieve your commented-on first draft

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

Log into your review group’s Workspace by going to workspace.office.live.com as described in slides 12 and 13 of the “How to Upload Your File to Office Live Workspace” tutorial. At your group’s Workspace, you can then double-click on your file’s link under the Name column:

slide 3: your essay draft in the “View” or “Preview” mode

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

After you click on your document’s name/link, the document will again open in the View/Preview mode:

slide 4: always check for comments added but not following directions

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

Now, as directed in slides 13-28 and slides 37-45 of the “How to Comment on Essays in Office Live Workspace” tutorial, the other members of your group should have put any comments on your first draft into your first draft file itself using the Comment feature of Microsoft Word. However, it will always be possible that one or more members of your group didn’t follow these instructions and instead may have used the Comment button in the Preview/View mode to make comments on your draft. So unfortunately, you will always have to check for this possibility.

slide 5: click on the Comment button to check for comments put in this way

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

To check for comments made on your first draft but not put into your Word file, click on the Comment button at the top of the Preview/View mode for your essay.

slide 6: the Comment pane with or without comments in it

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

The Comment pane will open, and you may see comments in it:

Or maybe you won’t:

slide 7: Activity pane also indicates if any comments are in Comment pane

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

Actually, if you click on the Activity button, either in the Preview/View mode for your essay or even on the main page for your group’s Workspace itself, the Activity pane will open and show you if any body has put comments on your draft in the Comment pane:

That is, the I icon will show next to the record of someone having put something in this essay’s Comment pane (as opposed to a comment in the file itself, indicated by the icon).

indicates a comment

added to the Comment pane

indicates a comment

added inside the Word file

itself

slide 8: activity e-mails if you allow them will also inform you about comments made

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

And if you didn’t follow the advice I gave in slide 11 of the “How to Upload Your File to Office Live Workspace” tutorial, that is, if you didn’t uncheck the box labeled “Send me activity e-mails” at the bottom of the pane on the right side of your Office Live Workspace—or if you did but you went back and re-checked this later—you will also get an e-mail like the one on the next slide every time someone puts something in the Comment pane about your essay, so it’s another way to know whether there are any comments there.

slide 9: example of an e-mailed alert that someone has done something in your Workspace

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

slide 10: saving your file from the Workspace if your computer runs Windows and has Word

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

If members of your group followed directions and put comments in your Word file itself, as mentioned in slide 30 of the “How to Comment on Essays in Office Live Workspace” tutorial, you won’t see them in the View/Preview mode. To view any comments in your file—and save the file back to your computer at the same time—click on the Save As button:

slide 11: save your file to your computer, don’t just open it

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

You’ll next see a pop-up like the following:

Click on the Save button, then in the “Save As” dialog box you’ll get next, select where you want to save this file and then click the Save button at the bottom of that box.

slide 12: confirmation that your file saved to your computer successfully

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

If the file downloads successfully, you’ll get a pop-up like the following:

Now you can click on the Open button, or especially if you come back later you can navigate to where you saved the file and open it from there to view any comments in the file.

slide 13: saving your file from the Workspace if you have a Mac

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

If you’re working on a Mac, just open your essay file in your Workspace in Preview/View mode and click on the Save As button just as described in slide 10 above, and if you’re using the Safari browser the next thing you’ll see is a pop-up like the following:

Go ahead and click on the Download button.

slide 14: determining where the file is that you just saved from Safari

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

The Word file will now have been saved to whatever location is specified in Safari’s settings for saving downloaded files. If you’re not sure where the file has been saved, or if you want to change the “landing site” for downloaded files, click on the Safari menu. The following menu drops down:

Click on the Preferences… menu, and the “General” window will appear as illustrated on the following slide:

slide 15: the General preferences window of Safari

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

slide 16: the location for saving downloads as given in Safari’s preferences

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

Note the location given in the box after the label Save downloaded files to:; this is where the file you downloaded will be. You can change this location by clicking on the up/down arrows on the right, and you’ll then get a pop-up like the following:

You can click on Other . . . to select a new location on your computer to save downloaded files to.

slide 17: how to view comments in your Word file after you’ve downloaded it

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

Whether you have a current or earlier version of Word for either Windows or Mac, to make sure you see any comments that members of your review group might have put in your file you can consult my document mccorduck.net/wordtutorials/viewingcomments.

slide 18: watch out for duplicate uploads containing additional comments

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

Finally, it’s also possible that other members of your group may mess up the procedures for opening your file to put comments in it and saving it back to your Workspace as I describe how to do this right in the “How to Comment on Essays in Office Live Workspace” tutorial. That is, you may see variations on your file name like those illustrated for the JohnSmith-3-1 example in the screen grab on the following slide:

slide 19: examples of files incorrectly saved back to the Workspace

CPN 100/101: Writing Studies I/II on Computer

If you see differently-named versions of your file like these in your Workspace too, unfortunately you’ll still have to download each of these separately and check each of them for separate comments. I hope this doesn’t happen with yours, but it might, sorry to say.