Add Comments to Text in Word Using Java

Comments can be added to almost every element in Word, such as text, images, charts, tables, etc. The previous post has introduced how to add comment to a paragraph in a Word document. Now, this article will focus on how to add comments to selected text (phrase) in a Word document using Free Spire.Doc for Java.

Installation
Method 1: Download the free API and unzip it, then add the Spire.Doc.jar file to your project as dependency.

Method 2: You can also add the jar dependency to maven project by adding the following configurations to the pom.xml.

<repositories>
   <repository>
      <id>com.e-iceblue</id>
      <name>e-iceblue</name>
      <url>http://repo.e-iceblue.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
   </repository>
</repositories>
<dependencies>
   <dependency>
      <groupId>e-iceblue</groupId>
      <artifactId>spire.doc.free</artifactId>
      <version>5.1.0</version>
   </dependency>
</dependencies>

Sample Code

The Paragraph.appendComment() method is used to add comments to an entire paragraph. By default, the comment mark will be placed at the end of the paragraph. To add a comment to a specific phrase, you need to place comment marks (represented by the CommentMark class) at the beginning and end of the text range.

import com.spire.doc.Document;
import com.spire.doc.FileFormat;
import com.spire.doc.documents.CommentMark;
import com.spire.doc.documents.CommentMarkType;
import com.spire.doc.documents.Paragraph;
import com.spire.doc.documents.TextSelection;
import com.spire.doc.fields.Comment;

public class AddCommentToSpecificText {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        //Create a Document object
        Document doc = new Document();

        //Load the sample Word file
        doc.loadFromFile("C:\\Users\\Administrator\\Desktop\\Olympics.docx");

        //Find the specific string to add comment
        TextSelection[] finds = doc.findAllString("Olympic Games", false, true);
        TextSelection specificText = finds[0];

        //Create a start mark 
        CommentMark commentmarkStart = new CommentMark(doc);
        commentmarkStart.setType(CommentMarkType.Comment_Start);

        //Create an end mark
        CommentMark commentmarkEnd = new CommentMark(doc);
        commentmarkEnd.setType(CommentMarkType.Comment_End);

        //Create a comment
        Comment comment = new Comment(doc);
        comment.getBody().addParagraph().setText("modern Olympic Games or Olympics ");
        comment.getFormat().setAuthor("Kenny");

        //Find the paragraph where the string is located
        Paragraph para = specificText.getAsOneRange().getOwnerParagraph();

        //Get the index of the string in the paragraph
        int index = para.getChildObjects().indexOf(specificText.getAsOneRange());

        //Add the comment to the paragraph
        para.getChildObjects().add(comment);

        //Insert the start mark and end mark to the paragraph based on the index
        para.getChildObjects().insert(index, commentmarkStart);
        para.getChildObjects().insert(index + 2, commentmarkEnd);

        //Save to file
        doc.saveToFile("AddComment.docx", FileFormat.Docx_2013);
    }
}