There are a lot of details that the user has to concern themselves with when creating a cell comment, as the quick-guide shows [1]. Perhaps this could be consolidated into one or two utility functions (CellUtil, perhaps) to make it easier to create new cell comments. static void addCellComment(Cell cell, CellRangeAddress anchor, String/RichTextString comment, String author); [1] http://poi.apache.org/spreadsheet/quick-guide.html#CellComments