Tracking action items in a Microsoft Word web document

There are times when you’d like to keep track of things to do in a document, such as reminders to find more information, get reviews from particular people, and so forth. When you’re using Word on the web for a document stored in SharePoint Online or OneDrive, you can now do that with the Follow-up and @mention features. Here’s how that works…

I created a document in my OneDrive so that I can collaborate with others on it. Here in the web-based version of Microsoft Word, I want to create a follow-up item in the document, so I right-click in a blank area and select New Follow-up:

You can also create a follow-up by entering square brackets ( [] ) followed by a space.

Once the follow-up option is selected, you’ll see a prompt telling you to type in your follow-up and press the Tab key when you’re done:

The follow-up is now highlighted in yellow to make it easy to see:

When you click on an existing follow-up, you have the option to Remove text, Keep text, or See all Follow-ups:

Selecting See all Follow-ups opens the Navigation pane on the left-side of the screen, and shows you all the follow-ups in the document:

You can also prompt someone as part of a follow-up by using @mentions. Here, I added @mahan and selected Sandra’s name:

Her name now shows up as part of the follow-up list:

You can also click Comments in the upper-right corner of Word and see all the documents in the document, which also includes the follow-ups and any @mentions:

This is a great way to make notes on what still needs to be done and have it stored within the document for easy reference.

For more examples of collaborating on Word documents, check out Best practices for collaborating in Microsoft 365.