If you are signed up for Microsoft 365, you might use the web versions of the company’s popular Word, Excel, and PowerPoint productivity apps. This week, Microsoft revealed that it has made some improvements for all three apps that center on their Catch Up functionality.
Catch Up, in case you are unaware, allows users to quickly view the latest comments and changes made to files that are being shared and collaborated with other people. In a post on the Microsoft 365 blog, the company says that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint users now have two more Catch Up features to check out.
The first of the two new features is a section called Activities For You. Microsoft says:
When you come back to a collaborative file, the Catch Up feature will notify you of any new comment activity that is directed at you, in the Activities for you section. Clicking any of the items in that list will take you directly to that comment so you can quickly follow-up with your collaborators. These activities will include comment tasks, mentions, and replies.
Microsoft adds that when users see a blue dot next to a name in the Activities For You section, that means there are activities you have yet to see. Any item on that activities list can be dismissed by the user if they no longer wish to view it.
The other new Catch Up feature will let users quickly who has made any edits or changes in a collaborate file:
You will find a summary of who made edits in the document, workbook, or presentation since you last viewed it. Clicking this section will direct you to the top-most edit in the file. If there are no new edits, you will also be able to access previous edits from this section.
The files must be stored in either OneDrive or SharePoint in order to use the Catch Up feature. It is available now for both Word and PowerPoint on the web and will be added to the Excel web app soon. Microsoft adds that Catch Up will be added to the Windows versions of all those apps in the near future.