Microsoft Word track changes mystery

[dmfresco]

I have Office 365 updated to the latest build on three MacBook Pros. Two of them are 2020, 13-inch Intel machines. One of them is a 2021, 14-inch, M1Pro. On the two Intel Macs, MS Word files show marginal comments as a colorful balloon to the right of line edits. On the M1 Pro Mac, it's the older style where comments and line edits are in the same column. I cannot figure out how and why to change the behavior of MS Word. I don't think it's a Rosetta issue as the build of Office 365 seems to be universal.

Also, the "show comments" from the review menu is greyed out on the Silicon Mac.

Can anyone help me figure out how to modify the settings to make the Review menu work the same across all these Macs?

 

[MikeDr206]

I have the exact opposite issue. on my M1 Mac, I get the newer style (what ms calls “modern comments”), on my Intel the older style.

both machines are running the exact same version and build of Word.

the only thing I can guess is that MS is still rolling out the newer style, and randomly turns them on on a per-machine basis.

 

[dmfresco]

I finally figured out that the way to get the modern comments appears to allow your install of Office 365 to get enrolled in the Beta program. When I deliberately enrolled my Silicon Mac into the beta, I got the modern comments.

 

[MikeDr206]

Oddly, I’m not installed in the beta program. I think it’s strange that enabling modern comments is a per-device thing and not a per-user thing.