Comments/annotations on moved or duplicated board elements


One problem I’ve run into is the fact that comments do not follow elements as they are moved to other boards or duplicated. I tend to use comments as a way of annotating elements like sticky notes--explaining the sticky note’s existence, giving more detail or context, etc. In the process of organizing boards--splitting them up, combining them, etc.--I often need to duplicate or move elements. Unfortunately, comments are specific to one exact element on one exact board.

A couple of ideas:

  • Optionally allow a paste action to copy comments (e.g., with a UI dialog or special shortcut)
  • Add a new feature called “annotations” which purposely follow the element no matter how it is moved or duplicated

The annotations idea is interesting because it creates a sort of “metadata” about the element that is treated as an inextricable part of the element; this would allow comments to be more about free-form discussion than metadata.

I like the annotation idea, as a new feature.

I/we use the comments to pin point issues on whiteboard based drawings (as part of a landscape architectural teaching programme). We often create new boards and wish to transfer students drawings between them and being able to keep the comment tied to the data is essential.

However, it would be great just to be able to use the universal copy and paste feature - which is my issue currently (along with others)  - and to re/add comments is hugely time wasteful and not frankly not practical! 

 

So it would be great to have both the cc and paste sorted soon with a new ‘annotation’ feature as you are suggesting in due course - come on MIRO?


Man this is really frustrating today, needing to merge board content and the comments are as important as any other element in there : /


Who would of thought, 2 Landscape Architects seeking the same feature, good afternoon Geoff….. surely only a coincidence. Combine, Adapt and Sequence workshop content, and the dialogue that follows, for design reviews especially, could make really good use of this. 


I would LOVE annotations that are inherent to an object. 

 

My primary use case is in the form of software architectural diagrams. Let’s consider the diagram a graph, with nodes and edges. Each node is a component, and each edge describes relationships between components. 

 

To that end, I’d like to annotate nodes. Examples could be: 

  • Links to more information/documentation
  • Descriptions or gotchas
  • Risks or unknowns
  • Mitigations or alternatives
  • Tags like owners, stakeholders, projects

It would be useful if annotations have the following properties:

  • They are separated/expandable by key value (instead of just single text box into which a lot of text is crammed and awkwardly separated
  • Annotate multiple objects at once after selecting objects via drag
  • They are able to be templated across the entire graph as key value pairs. For example, if I wanted every node to include a field that contains a description of how failure for a given component would be handled
  • They are visible in layers. If every object contains an annotation, then making those annotations visible across the board with a single action

In essence, I often come across a situation where a diagram has extra ‘dimensions’ that are not demonstrable in a diagram/graph without cluttering the graph.  I would like the ability to surface information that is inherent to the system but doesn’t need to be always visible. 

The way this problem is usually solved is that there is an accompanying text document that describes the things that cannot be shown neatly in the miro diagram. I would love the capability to remove that translation and bring the information as close to the diagram as possible. 

 

EDIT: I ended up creating a separate ticket


Whether annotations are a new feature or comments just become ‘sticky’ and copy with all other elements, I’m in! We need a fix... losing comments in a copy/paste is so painful :(


Just wanted to add my experience there… I was not aware of comments being lost when copying  content.

I’m using Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V to move things around and it is very unintuitive that this will make comments disappear. Today I only noticed this behavior hours later after I had prepared a new board and I could not undo my actions. The original content with all my comments is gone.

In this particular case this has a huge impact on my work and I’m super frustrated.

Update: Luckily I was able to restore a previous version of my board and I’m now in the process of copying single comments one by one to the new board.


Ah, this is such a pity. Currently combining workshop inputs from multiple boards into one to synthesise all the info. But without the comments, a lot of the discussion is “lost”.

This feels like a missed feature to be honest. 


Has this really not been fixed? Comments need to be mobile.


Are there any updates to accommodate the need (!) for copying associated comments from one board to another? 

The idea of ‘duplicating the entire board’ doesn’t work well--because if I’m trying to merge content (with associated comments) from two separate boards, then how do I make that work? 

Hope to hear back! 


Bumping this because it’s still a vital need! Working with clients, my team often has our board and their board. We comment to each other on our board, but also end up with comments intended for team/client discussion. It’s a huge pain to copy a new version of something to the client board and then recreate all these client-facing comments. There are a TON of use cases where copying comments is necessary.

Not to mention being able to select and move them WITH the associate content! ARGH. Please 😭


I just ran into this recently and this isn’t great.  I keep track of some vital contextual info that is too big to store in a sticky.

Consider that Microsoft Word keeps comments if you cut and paste them, that’s kind of what people are used to.

Please consider fixing this!

 


We actually need this function! Now we can’t use comments because they can’t be copied. So sorry.


I wait for this feature 🙄


Comments should be copied/moved.

Is there a specific reason for not following the rest of the elements? Any response from the Miro Support team? There are so many essential or non-essential features being added constantly. 🤔


I ran into this recently. I used comments to capture feedback and detail on elements on a diagram and now I’m trying to combine that diagram in a board with other, similar diagrams. Losing all the detail in the comments makes this hard.


bump


Can’t believe this still doesn’t exist! 


bump!


I like the annotation idea, as a new feature.

I/we use the comments to pin point issues on whiteboard based drawings (as part of a landscape architectural teaching programme). We often create new boards and wish to transfer students drawings between them and being able to keep the comment tied to the data is essential.

However, it would be great just to be able to use the universal copy and paste feature - which is my issue currently (along with others)  - and to re/add comments is hugely time wasteful and not frankly not practical! 

 

So it would be great to have both the cc and paste sorted soon with a new ‘annotation’ feature as you are suggesting in due course - come on MIRO?


I agree it should be a different new feature as I think comments have their own use-case and usefulness