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I have a Google Spreadsheet with several boxes with the little orange triangle indicating a comment associated with that cell. Unfortunately, I haven't made any comments, so cannot delete these boxes. How do I go about clearing these cells without deleting everything and starting over?

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Where did the comments come from? Is this a shared spreadsheet? Is it copied from someone else's spreadsheet? – Al Everett Dec 28 '12 at 20:03
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Comments, as opposed to notes, can be made by multiple people. If this is a shared spreadsheet you may not be able to delete them. – Al Everett Dec 28 '12 at 20:05
I'm not sure where the comments are coming from. The sheet is only shared with one other person, and he is having the same problem only worse. Both sheets show a different number of comments, all of which appear to be empty. I've tried adding a comment with the intention of deleting it, but any square with the phantom comment flag won't allow me to add a new comment to it. If I delete a row (or a column) containing the phantom comments, they disappear. Reinserting the column (or row) causes the comments to reappear. – Chris Dec 28 '12 at 21:03
If I were you, I'd start with a new spreadsheet and copy the data over. – Al Everett Dec 29 '12 at 15:27

2 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Per the Google Drive Help page:

We've received reports of users seeing comment indicators on cells in which no comments exist, as well as comment indicators in the incorrect cell after a sheet is resorted, duplicated, or amended by copy/paste.

Our team is aware of the issue and working on a fix. As a workaround, if you notice out-of-place comment indicators, simply refresh the spreadsheet. All comment indicators should appear in the correct cells again.

Following these instructions, I tried simply hitting the refresh button and all of the phantom comments disappeared. I guess sometimes the easiest solution is the best one.

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Generally speaking, you should be able to right-click one of the cells, choose Insert comment, then click the delete link. After you confirm the comment(s) should be gone.

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I'm not sure where the comments are coming from. The sheet is only shared with one other person, and he is having the same problem only worse. Both sheets show a different number of comments, all of which appear to be empty. – Chris Dec 28 '12 at 20:21
I've tried adding a comment with the intention of deleting it, but any square with the phantom comment flag won't allow me to add a new comment to it. – Chris Dec 28 '12 at 20:22
If I delete a row (or a column) containing the phantom comments, they disappear. Reinserting the column (or row) causes the comments to reappear. – Chris Dec 28 '12 at 20:30

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