Posted on

Microsoft Word Online Follow-ups feature to be replaced with Comments

The Follow-ups feature in Word Online will be replaced with Comments effective Mar 1, 2021. Comments can be used to notify others and assign tasks by using @mentions.

This was announced via the Message center earlier this month.

What will happen to my existing Follow-ups?

These will be converted to Comments automatically.

How do I use Comments in Word Online?

You can right-click text and select New Comment to create a comment.

Click to enlarge

You can use an @mention to notify someone in your organization. Once @mentioned, you can check a box to also assign that user a task.

Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge

The assigned user then receives an email with a snippet of the task’s context and link to full document. The user can choose to respond to the comment without leaving the email by expanding Add a comment, or they can click Go to comment to go to the full document.

Click to enlarge

To resolve the task, the user needs to Go to comment and can then check the task off in the original comment’s header as shown below.

Click to enlarge.
Posted on

Solution: SharePoint Asset Library app type missing when adding new app to site

If you’re wanting to add an Asset Library to your SharePoint site but not finding it available as an option, chances are the Video and Rich Media feature for that site collection isn’t activated. This feature enables the asset library which is basically a modified document library but with metadata specific to rich media that can be auto-extracted such as width and height of images, duration of video clips, etc. Asset libraries are good for storing your audio, video, and image content types.

To enable it (as a site collection admin) go to Settings > Site Settings and choose Site collection features from under the Site Collection Administration heading.

Then scroll down and look for the Video and Rich Media feature. Click Activate.

As the description says, this will “[provide] libraries, content types, and web parts for storing, managing, and viewing rich media assets, like images, sound clips, and videos.” Once activated, you’ll now be able to add the asset library to your site(s) in that collection.