(Originally published on Aug 31, 2023 by John Teichman)
Hi, Microsoft 365 Insiders! My name is John Teichman and I'm a Product Manager on the PowerPoint team. I am excited to share two new exciting enhancements to comments in PowerPoint for Mac, Windows, and web: Reactions and Blue Dots.
Reactions and Blue Dots for Comments available in PowerPoint for Mac, Windows, and web
Comments are a great way to collaborate with others in PowerPoint. We’ve added reactions to the Comment field as a quick visual way for you to respond to a comment. With reactions, you don’t have to type a reply - you can quickly acknowledge a comment if you agree with it. Just click the Like button.
When you collaborate with others in PowerPoint, you can see that changes have been made by others on a slide by a blue dot on the corresponding thumbnail slide. With Blue Dots for Comments, you can now visually scan the Comments window and quickly identify comments or replies that have been added since you last viewed the presentation.
How it works
- Open an existing PowerPoint presentation that already contains comments.
Blue dots comment screen
- To react to a comment, in the top right corner of the comment box, click the Like button and notice that the button color changes to yellow.
Comment with user like
- To remove your reaction, click the Like button again.
- To find changes made to your presentation since you last viewed it, look for a blue dot to the left of the text on the slide. The blue dot on the comment indicates it's new for you to review.
- To see who has added a comment or made an edit to the slide and when they made it, hover over the Like button or the blue dot.
Comment with multiple likes
Tips and tricks
- To track how many likes your comment gets, you can view the Likes within the comment thread with the Like button.
- To see who has liked your comment, hover over the Like button.
Availability
Reactions and Blue Dots in PowerPoint are available on the web and to Current Channel (Preview) users running:
- Windows: Version 2305 (Build 16529.20226) or later
- Mac: Version 16.76 (Build 23081101) or later
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
We hope you love these PowerPoint features. To submit feedback, please click Help > Feedback in PowerPoint and let us know what you think.
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