Add Comments

A comment is not a property of a paragraph. It lives in its own part of the document package and is tied to the body by a pair of range markers, so adding one means opening a range, adding the runs it should cover, and closing it again. UniOffice exposes that as three calls, plus a fourth for replies.

Both markers append to whatever the paragraph already holds, which is what decides the covered range. Runs added between the two calls are inside the comment; runs added before AddComment or after CloseComment are outside it. Close on a later paragraph and the range spans everything in between.

Adding a comment

doc := document.New()
defer doc.Close()

para := doc.AddParagraph()
cmID := para.AddComment("UniOffice User", "This is comment")

para.AddRun().AddText("Lorem")
para.CloseComment(cmID)

root := doc.Comment(cmID)
if _, err := root.AddReply("Reviewer One", "I agree, this should be simplified."); err != nil {
    return err
}
root.SetDone(true)

The ID is assigned by the library, not chosen by you: it is one past the highest ID already in the document, starting at 1. Author initials are derived from the author name and the comment date is set to the current time, so neither needs passing in.

doc.Comment(id) returns a zero-value Comment when no comment carries that ID rather than reporting a miss, and AddReply on that value fails with invalid comment.

Limitations

AddReply requires the thread root’s range to be closed first, because the reply’s own markers are inserted next to the root’s. Calling it before CloseComment returns comment anchor not found; the comment range may not be closed (Paragraph.CloseComment) or is anchored in an unsupported part. Anchors are looked for in the body, table cells, headers, footers, footnotes and endnotes; a comment anchored anywhere else cannot be replied to.

Word threads are flat. reply.AddReply(...) walks up to the thread root and attaches there, so the result is a second reply alongside the first rather than a nested one.

The markers can only be appended, never inserted. There is no call that wraps a comment range around runs already sitting in the middle of a paragraph, so the comment boundaries have to be planned while the paragraph is being built.

SetDone writes the resolved flag into commentsExtended.xml and registers a durable ID in commentsIds.xml, creating both parts if the document does not have them yet.

Run the example

The example builds a three-paragraph document with two comments. The first covers a single word and carries a two-message thread marked resolved; the second opens partway through a paragraph and closes in the paragraph after it, which is the multi-paragraph range case. Output is simple_doc_with_comment.docx.

git clone https://github.com/unidoc/unioffice-examples.git
cd unioffice-examples/document/comment
go run main.go

If this is your first time using UniOffice, follow the getting started guide to create an API key and set up your development environment.

Sample output

The two anchored ranges are shaded in the body, with the comments listed in the review pane.