Microsoft has started testing a new to do feature in Word, reports The Verge. This automatically adds leftover messages that serve as a reminder of what still needs to be done to a to do list in the document.
The company discovered that many people leave messages in their Word documents to remind them that more text, photos or graphics need to be added. The new function automatically searches for text that says “todo:” or “<>”, and adds these messages as suggestions.
Word then lists the items that can also be sent to colleagues via an @-mention in a shared document. This notification is converted into an e-mail to a colleague. It is also possible to modify the document by responding to that mail. If a colleague asks for an image to be added and a user is mentioned in the image, the user can respond to the mail with the image. The image is added directly to the document.
Machine learning
The function works through machine learning to discover the notes in the documents. In the future, Word will also be suggesting recent documents to add content. These documents do not need to be opened to see graphs. The graphs in that document are displayed in a sidebar for users to add them quickly.
The feature is now available for Office on Mac testers. A Windows version should be tested in the coming weeks. After these tests, the function is rolled out to existing Office 365 users. In the future, the position will also have to be transferred to other Office apps.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
8 hours ago
