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On one of Microsoft’s Office Insider blogs, a PM on the Excel team recently announced new functionality in the helpfully consistent evolution of Comments and Notes. Specifically, the debut of yellow sticky comments, now called Notes, in Excel for the web. There are also some new additions around threaded comments and the notes experience in Excel (desktop). Let’s find out more.
Microsoft released threaded comments to all flavors of Excel back in January of 2019. When they did so, they kept the original legacy comments (yellow sticky notes) in Windows and Mac and rename them notes. Because notes and comments share different purposes – this gave them the foundation to support both under varying user scenarios. But when they introduced threaded comments, they removed the ability to create notes in Excel for the web. So, confusingly, notes created in Excel desktop looked and worked differently in Excel for the web. Yes, an example would be gold right now, right?
Here is how comments and notes appear today in Excel desktop:
Here are the major important steps Microsoft has taken to address the issues and functionality across platforms regarding Comments and Notes:
Working with comments and notes across Windows, Mac, and the web is simple. Just follow these instructions.
NOTE: You can also right-click the cell you want to place a comment or note on, then use the shortcut menu to accomplish the task.
Other commands related to comments and notes are also found on the Review tab, allowing you to show or hide notes or comments, move to the next or previous item, convert notes to comments, and more.
The new functionality described here is rolling out to all users throughout the month of August (2021). As always, some of you won’t see the new features right away. Microsoft likes to roll things out slowly (A/B…ugh) to make sure the experience is first-rate. 🙂
If you want to see some Scenarios you can try or read up on some Known Issues, visit this blog post for more info!
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