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Assign tasks with @mentions in Excel

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Hi, Office Insiders. My name is Scott McFadden and I’m a Product Manager on the Excel team. I’m excited to share that you can now assign tasks with @mentions in worksheets in Excel for Windows and Excel for Mac!  

Assign Tasks  

We’ve brought this popular capability (previously only available in Excel for the web) to your Windows and Mac desktops.  

This feature allows you and your team to conveniently create and assign tasks directly from within your Excel worksheet using @mentions in comments. The people to whom you assign the tasks will receive email notifications, letting them know they need to take action.

How it works  

  1. Right-click the cell that contains the information you want to comment on and select New Comment. 
  2. Write your comment and type @ followed by the name of the team member you want to tag.

     
  3. Select the Assign to check box to convert your comment into a task.The "assign to" checkbox has been marked to assign to the person tagged with the @ mention.
  4. Click the green arrow Green arrow pointing right or press Ctrl + Enter to post your comment and assign the task.A task once it has been assigned.

Scenarios to try 

  • Reassign a task 
  1. Type @ followed by the name of the team member you want to reassign the task to in the response field, and then select the Reassign to check box.How to reassign a task in the same comment using an @mention.
  2. Click the green arrowGreen arrow pointing right or press Ctrl + Enter; the person to whom you reassigned the task will be notified via email that they’ve been assigned the task.A task that has been reassigned.

 

  • Resolve a task 
    • Hover over the circle at the top of the comment and click Resolve thread. 
  • Reopen a resolved task 
    • Hover over the cell that contains the comment, and then click Reopen thread. 

Requirements  

To see Tasks in Excel, the Excel file must be stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. 

Availability  

This feature is available to all users on the web and to Beta Channel users running:

  • Windows: Version 2208 (Build 15504.10000) or later
  • Mac: Version 16.66 (Build 22090700) or later

Don’t have it yet? It’s probably us, not you.  

Features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly. We highlight features that you may not have because they’re slowly releasing to larger numbers of Insiders. Sometimes we remove elements to further improve them based on your feedback. Though this is rare, we also reserve the option to pull a feature entirely out of the product, even if you, as an Insider, have had the opportunity to try it.  

Feedback  

There are a couple of ways to give feedback and suggestions: 

  • Click Help > Feedback. 
  • Add #AssignTasks in your feedback so that we can easily find input about the feature. 

Learn what other information you should include in your feedback to ensure  it’s actionable and reaches the right people. We’re excited to hear from you!