Who is this article for?

Please Review Users accepting and closing review comments.

Review Authors can accept and close comments and proposed changes.

This article relates to accepting and closing comments and proposed changes in the Please Review review interface. Participants with the role of Author or Owner in a review can accept and close comments and proposed changes. This can be done whilst the review is In Progress or after the review has been Closed by the review Owner, but not when the review status is Completed.

1. Accepting and Closing All Comments

The purpose of accepting and closing comments is:

1. It allows a comment or discussion thread to be closed-off in a manner which all Reviewers can see.
2. It provides feedback for the comment reconciliation report.
3. It allows for the control of the behaviour of comments and proposed changes when they are included in the resulting Word and PDF document (or report, for other document formats).

Authors/Owners can accept or close all (or a defined subset of) open comments and proposed changes at once. The Accept all option is located within the Accept icon and the Close all option is located within the Close icon on the Please Review toolbar.

When the Accept all or Close all option is selected, a new dialog box will open allowing you to enter a reconciliation comment:

The dialog box displays how many comments and changes are affected.

To select a subset of comments/changes to accept or close, you can first apply a filter using the filter icon on the toolbar. For example, applying a filter to display only comments and changes with the category of minor, followed by selecting the Accept all option will result in all open comments and changes with the category of minor being accepted.

Here are a few things to note about accepting and closing comments:

• Only non-conflicting proposed changes will be accepted/closed. Any conflicting changes will be ignored by the accept/close all process.
• It is possible to change the category of comments and proposed changes in the Accept all and Close all dialog box.

2. Accepted/Closed Comments

Once the Author/Owner has accepted/closed comments and proposed changes, the status of the comment/change is updated and clearly displayed:

The option to Re-Open an accepted or closed comment/change will be available from the actions drop-down menu visible in the top right corner when hovering over or selecting the comment/change in the review pane:

• Where there are conflicting proposed changes on a paragraph, the Merge option should be used.
• When there are accepted, closed, or merged comments/changes on a paragraph a single information comment is displayed.
• Give Reason is a system configuration setting and therefore may be disabled.

3. Comment Categorisation

If the comment categorisation feature is enabled, the Author/Owner will be able to re-categorize the comment or proposed change during the accept/close process. This is achieved using either the Accept with reason or Close with reason option which will open the Give Reason dialog box.

The Author/Owner can select a new comment category from the drop-down list:

4. Conflicting Changes (Word Only)

If there are conflicting proposed changes on a paragraph, the comment will be shaded red and the ‘’ icon will display. In such instances, a Merge option will be available on the action's menu:

5. Making New Comments or Proposed Changes

If an Author/Owner makes a new comment, proposes a new change, or revises as existing change they have the additional option of Apply Accept. This means that the comment or change will automatically be accepted as soon as it is applied:

5.1. Revising Proposed Changes

In addition to Accept and Close, each proposed change in a Microsoft Word document has the option to Revise:

Selecting Revise will allow the Author/Owner to edit the proposed change. If the Author/Owner applies the edits, Please Review automatically closes the original proposed change with an appropriate close reason being given and creates a new proposed change (attributed to the Author/Owner) with the revised text. This maintains the integrity of the audit trail.

6. Deleting Comments, changes and redactions

To delete a comment, change, or redaction:

If there are replies:

• The owner of the most recent reply must delete their reply first.
• Other reply owners then delete their replies in reverse chronological order.

Once all replies are removed:

• The original comment/change/redaction owner can delete it.

7. Further Reading

• How to Accept and Close Comments in the Classic Interface
• How to Accept and Close Toolbar and Actions Menu Comments