Excel 2024: New Threaded Comments Allow Conversations

Threaded comments debuted in 2018. When you insert a comment, Excel stores the comment, the author, the date, and time. When a co-worker sees your comment, they can click Reply and add a new comment to the same cell. Each set of comments lists the author, date, and time. Use the ... menu to mark a comment as resolved. If you @Mention someone, they will be notified by Outlook.

These new threaded comments are indicated by a five-sided purple shape instead of the red triangle used for the old style comments (now known as Notes).

Bonus Tip: Old Style Comments Are Available as Notes

While the new threaded comments are cool, there are some great tricks that the old legacy comments offered that are lost with the threaded comments. Luckily, if you have a situation requiring one of the special tricks, the old comments are still available as Notes.

Here are some of my favorite Note techniques:

• Individual notes could be set to always show. This is useful for creating helpful instructions for a spreadsheet. Select a cell containing a red-triangle indicator and select Review, Notes, Show/Hide Note.
• Notes can be resized and located in a specific position. Right-click a cell with a note and choose Edit Note. Use the resize handle to change the size or drag an edge to move the comment.
• You can change the shape of a note. To start, Right-click the Ribbon and choose Customize Quick Access Toolbar. In the dialog box, change the top-left drop-down menu to All Commands. Find the Change Shape icon in the left list and click the Add>> button to add it to the Quick Access Toolbar. Right-click the cell containing the note and choose Show Note. Ctrl+Click on the edge of the note to select the note without entering text edit mode. Use the Change Shape icon in the Quick Access toolbar to choose a new shape. Note that you will often have to resize the note after choosing a shape. You also might try the Center and Align Middle icons to center the text in the shape. After changing the shape, you can return to Hide Note to make the note only visible when you hover over the red triangle indicator.

• You can change the color of a note. This one is tricky because there are two versions of the Format Comment dialog box. While in edit mode, click the border of the comment and then press Ctrl+1 to open the Format Comment dialog box. You should see nine tabs in the dialog. If you only see the Font tab, close the dialog and try clicking the comment border again or Ctrl+Click the comment to leave text edit mode. When you have the dialog with all 9 tabs, use the Colors and Lines tab, Fill Color to change the color of a comment. Use Fill Effects to add a gradient or a picture.

• To create pop-up pictures: edit a note and backspace to remove your name from the note. With a completely blank note, Ctrl+Click the edge and press Ctrl+1. Use Colors and Lines, Fill Color, Fill Effects, Picture and choose a picture from your computer. Hide the note and the picture will pop up when you hover over the triangle.

The following screenshot shows examples of notes with colors, shapes, and a pop-up picture.

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Bonus Tip: Add a Tooltip to a Cell with Validation

In the previous Bonus Tip, I suggested using Notes for a help system. The problem with notes: it is possible to arrow in to a cell without ever hovering over the red triangle and the note might be missed. You can use the Data Validation dialog to set up a tooltip for a cell. The tooltip is only visible when the cell is the active cell.

Data Validation is found towards the right side of the Data tab in the Ribbon. I end up using Alt+D L because I always have a difficult time finding the Validation icon. Normally, most people use the Settings tab in Data Validation to control what can be entered in a cell. You will skip the Settings tab and go to the Input Message tab.

On the Input Message tab, type a title and a message. Click OK.

The result: a tooltip that will appear any time the cell is active:

Bonus Tip: Data Validation Partial Matching Added in 2022

For many years, people were frustrated that a data validation drop-down list did not use partial matching. There were a few hacks, such as Alfred F Vachris Jr's trick of using look-ahead typing as described at https://mrx.cl/lookahead.

Starting in March 2022, Microsoft 365 customers will be able to use partial matching for their Data Validation lists. In this figure, the valid list for cell C2 is shown in E2:E9. Type "Ap" and Excel shortens the list to include entries where any word in the entry starts with "Ap". This means you get Apple, Fuji Apple, Crab Apple. But they don't see Pineapple as a match. Also note that the list is presented with Apple Butter higher in the list than Fuji Apple because Apple Butter starts with "Ap".