Title: Viewing Closed Comments Last modified: August 19, 2016 --- # Viewing Closed Comments * Resolved [juneatnoon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/juneatnoon/) * (@juneatnoon) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/viewing-closed-comments/) * I understand how to close comments automatically after a certain number of days, and this is desirable to prevent spam. But when this is done, is there a way that the previous comments can still be viewed rather than just receiving a message that “comments are closed” and no way to see any comments left before they were disabled? Thanks! Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total) * [whooami](https://wordpress.org/support/users/whooami/) * (@whooami) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/viewing-closed-comments/#post-1130488) * > is there a way that the previous comments can still be viewed rather than just > receiving a message that “comments are closed” and no way to see any comments > left before they were disabled? * thats normal behaviour, unless the theme you are using has been written in such a way as to NOT display those comments. * if youre seeing what you describe, than change to the default theme, and look at it again. Do you see what you want? If so, then you need to make changes to your first (not the default )theme’s comments.php * Thread Starter [juneatnoon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/juneatnoon/) * (@juneatnoon) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/viewing-closed-comments/#post-1130491) * Thanks for the reply. I think I just realized I was confused and should have been asking a different question. If I disable comments manually, instead of a link to the popup it just says “comments closed,” but if I allow WP to automatically close comments, the link remains for the popup and the popup still shows previous comments. So that’s ok. I’m guessing there’s a difference between “disabling” and “closing,” so that was my misunderstanding. * But, a related question: When WP automatically closes for me, if users click on the popup link, the popup appears with a comments form and only tells users that comments are closed after they’ve tried to post the comment. Is there a way to put a notice right in the popup instead, so they don’t go to the trouble? * Also, on my single page, I am using the comments template (not the popup), and there I can see the previous comments, no form, but there is nothing stating that comments have been closed. I copied both files from the default, so I’m not sure why the inconsistency. Any ideas? * Thanks again. * Thread Starter [juneatnoon](https://wordpress.org/support/users/juneatnoon/) * (@juneatnoon) * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/viewing-closed-comments/#post-1130690) * I’ve figured it out. I needed another