Use caseRead
Review a colleague’s draft and send back Word comments
A Word file you can send back today: comments on the exact sentences they are about, marked by what must be fixed, an overall comment on top — every word of it one you chose.
- You start with
- A draft someone sent you for comments — a .docx, or a Markdown or text file — and, if you have one, the checklist or guidelines you are meant to review against.
- Time
- About an hour for a twenty-page document, most of it spent deciding what to send.
- Your part
- The judgement: what the review is for, which comments are right, how they are worded. Finding the passages and drafting the first version of each comment is not yours.
What you'll end up with
- “<name> - reviewed.docx” beside the original, with your comments in Word’s margin, under your name.
- Each comment on the passage it is about, and labelled major, minor or a strength if you want.
- An overall comment at the top, taken from the review memo, for the author to read first.
- The original file, exactly as you received it.
What it saves you is the part between having an opinion and the author being able to act on it: finding the sentence, writing the comment, putting it in Word.
How to review a colleague’s draft with AI, step by step
Put the draft — and the criteria — in your folder.
YouSave the file they sent into a folder MindMax has open. If there are reviewer guidelines, a checklist or a brief the draft must answer, save that alongside it.
Read the first two pages yourself.
YouKnow what the document is trying to do before anything tells you what is wrong with it. It is the frame you will judge every comment against.
Start a review and say what it is for.
You ask · MindMax answersAskFocus on whether the cost estimate holds up and on the rollout risks. Ignore wording.
Choose AI → Review this document… Write the focus in the first box, pick the criteria document in the second, or leave both empty. The focus decides where comments concentrate; serious problems elsewhere are still raised.
Let it work through the document.
MindMaxComments arrive chapter by chapter, starting with the one you are reading — flaws, unsupported claims, alternatives not ruled out, unclear passages and strengths, each on its passage and marked major or minor. A review memo follows.
Adopt, reword, ignore.
YouAdopt the comments you agree with and put them in your own words; ignore the ones you do not. Select any passage to add the points only you would make. Unsure about one? Ask AI talks it through with the passage in hand — that conversation is never exported.
Check the memo before it goes on top.
YouThe memo’s major issues should match the major comments you kept. Its last section lists things worth checking yourself — a number to re-derive, related work — before you send.
Export the reviewed copy and send it.
YouExport reviewed Word copy from the review panel. Tick the comments, add the overall comment and the severity labels if you want them, and attach the file it saves beside the original to your reply.
Why it works here
Comments where they belong
Every comment quotes its passage word for word, so it lands on those words in the Word file — not on “page 7, somewhere”.
AI document review →Reviewed against what matters here
A focus in one line, or the actual checklist from your folder, so the comments speak to the questions this review is for.
Review focus and criteria →Only your words go out
The AI drafts; nothing reaches the author unless you adopted it or wrote it. The original file is never touched.
Adopting comments →Also used here: AI annotation lenses · Guide: reviewing someone else’s document
Where it gets hard
- A PDF submission cannot come back as a Word file.
You can review a PDF in MindMax and read every comment there, but the reviewed copy is exported only from .docx, Markdown and text files. Ask the author for the source file.
- It comments; it does not rewrite their text.
Suggested wording goes inside the comment. The copy has no tracked changes in it — the author makes the edits.
- Comments already in the file are left alone.
If someone else reviewed it first, their comments stay in the copy, but the AI does not read them and replies are not threaded. Read them yourself before you start.
- A few comments may not find their place.
Where the quoted words appear twice, or are too short to place with confidence, the export lists the comment and why, instead of guessing. Add those by hand in Word, or select a longer passage and add the point as your own comment.
- The judgement is still yours.
It will raise things you would not have, and miss things only someone who knows the project would see. The hour is for exactly that.