The ability to initiate a Chat directly with a co-editor of a Word, Excel, PowerPoint document will be retired over several weeks beginning mid-April (across web, Windows and Mac versions of Office).
Moving forward, to communicate with others working in Office documents, we recommend using document Comments when you want to attach a comment to a specific selection within a document (on the Review tab on the ribbon), and Microsoft Teams Chat when you want to communicate with others immediately.
[How does this affect me?]
Once the change is implemented, when multiple people are in a document at the same time, you will continue to see names of co-editors at the top right of the document window, but the ability to initiate a Chat with one of the co-editors from this location will no longer be available.
Depending on admin settings, some users of Word, Excel, PowerPoint for Windows may continue to see a "Join Chat" entry point for document co-editors that launches a Skype or Teams application window when clicked or tells the user Chat is unavailable.
[What do I need to do to prepare for this change?]
Rather than using this built-in chat capability from within documents, users can use document Comments and Microsoft Teams chat to communicate with others.
Please click Additional Information to learn more about Microsoft Teams chat.
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