I’ve been asked by several readers if there’s a way to convert Word comments (Insert > Comment) to document text. It depends on what “convert” means. If you just need to get the text of a bunch of comments, you can open the Comments pane (View > Comments), select all, copy, and then paste to a new document. Easily done.
Microsoft Word’s AutoText feature provides an easy way to store and then reuse text, graphics, fields, tables, bookmarks, and other items. For example, this newsletter includes the same “Fine Print” section every week. All I have to do is save that text as an AutoText entry, and I can easily insert it in the newsletter without retyping, copying, or pasting. Think of AutoText as your boilerplate library.
I’m often faced with the task of creating a bibliography for a book I’m editing, but I hate typing in all those entries from scratch. Lazy fellow that I am, I’ve figured out an automated way to turn parenthetical notes into bibliography entries. It’s longish, but it sure beats doing it by hand. You may need to modify the procedure a bit to fit your own needs. Still, this article will give you the general idea.