We have a large MS Word document with a rigid structure that gets updated annually.  There are approximately 6 users who make personal annotations for their own view or global annotations to be viewed by others.

I am thinking of extending the Word document to have other text layers, one or two for each user, in addition to the one main text layer.  We would preserve the other built in layers used for headers, footers, graphics or images, etc.  Each layer assigned to a user would have dedicated permissions for who can view it - hopefully even by groups.   The document would be accessible from SharePoint.  I want to address as a separate problem the potential for two or more global annotations from individuals to visually overlap.

I have reviewed the comments capabilities of MS Word up to version 2013 and feel that these do not address what the users want to achieve.

Is this use case do able with Microsoft Word?

• Moved by Fei Xue - MSFTMicrosoft contingent staff 8 hours 2 minutes ago

Hi William,

It seems that after 12 hours of waiting I get to be the one to tell you... no what you are asking is not possible with Word.

You can designate via Tracked Changes different users who contribute to this document, but you cannot setup separate layers that would have designated access restrictions to the document.

Even though a Word document does have layers, these layers are fixed for their purpose. Once a user has access to the the document, all layers are available to them. With that said, you can restrict at a minor level changes made to liner sections of the document. However, from what I am inferring from your post that is not what you are trying to do.