In days of old, when you tried to send feedback to Microsoft on any of their products, your message went into the great bit bucket in the sky. And that’s even if you figured out where to send it.
But now, if you want to complain, Microsoft has built a mechanism right into their software. And let’s face it, you do want to complain, since most feedback that anyone ever bothers to give is negative, right?
There are a couple ways to access the feedback feature in Microsoft Office. These have evolved over the past couple years, and I think it’s easier than ever.
You can click on the File tab (#1 below), then choose Feedback in the list along the left (#2), and finally click the frownie icon next to “I Don’t Like Something” (#3). If you have an older version of Office, it still might say “Send a Frown”.
Or you can click the frownie icon at the right edge of the ribbon (#1 below), then when the Feedback task pane appears, click the icon next to
“I Don’t Like Something” in the task pane (#2).
In addition to sending a frown, you could also send a smile (“I like something”) or write up a suggestion on UserVoice, Microsoft’s suggestion box. I’d say frowns are 97 percent of my feedback, with frowns and suggestions making up about 2% and 1% respectively.
However you got this far, now you see the Feedback task pane which has a detailed form for you to fill out. Older versions of Office have a dialog instead of the task pane.
Give a detailed description of what has just annoyed you enough to click on a frownie icon. Details are good. I always check the screenshot box, and if the screenshot is not enough, I will add to the Excel window. Sometimes I paste an actual screenshot I’ve taken of an error message or dialog box right in the worksheet, or I add a textbox with a few lines of VBA code that is broken, or I may put before and after (or good and bad) charts side by side.
I always check the “attach my logs” box, because the logs may include some information that will help fix the problem. They don’t collect any personal information.
I always check the “you can contact me” box with my email address. Usually I also put my name and “Excel MVP” in the description field so they might be more inclined to contact me. And in fact, I have heard back from Microsoft because of frowns I’ve sent.
Usually if something doesn’t work, I can figure out a workaround, or loop a few extra times in VBA until something that’s supposed to happen finally happens. But it’s useful for Microsoft to know what things aren’t working as expected. I have started asking my clients to submit frowns when something goes wrong in their projects.
And if something changes that you like, it wouldn’t hurt you to send a smile their way.
Paul says
Unfortunately, I am using MS Office Professional Plus 2016 and I do not see either option available to me.
Jon Peltier says
Interesting. I thought the smile/frown thing started in 2013. Let me check my other laptop.
Jim Chisholm says
Appears Feedback isn’t available on all flavors.
I’m running Office Pro Plus 2016 and there are no Feedback options.
Jon Peltier says
Paul –
Office 365 puts the smile icon right in the ribbon. Excel 2016 (non-Office 365) doesn’t have the ribbon icon, but if you click the File tab, you can still find Feedback in the list, and send a Smile/Frown from there.
Jon Peltier says
Jim –
As I just told Paul, on my Office Pro Plus 2016, I can get to Feedback through the File tab. However, my corporate IT department (i.e., me) has not put any policies in place restricting Office. I wonder if that’s what is happening on some of these computers.
Paul says
I just double checked. In the file menu, all I have are: Info, New, Open, Save, Save As, Print, Share, Export, Publish, Close, Account, Options. No Feedback option. I have also checked with IT and they have not put any policies in place to restrict it.
Not a big deal on my end, just interesting that it is not there.
Jim Chisholm says
I checked the registry and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\feedback\enabled = 0 so the Feedback feature has been disabled.
Not sure why IT would bother to do this nor why MS would ship a version with this turned off.
The “Send a Frown” feature within Power Query still surfaces when a problem crops up.
Jon Peltier says
Thanks, Jim. After you and Paul reported that you had no Feedback options, I sent an email to my friends at Microsoft to see what was going on. I imaging they will mention this registry setting, but you win by getting there first.
What’s interesting is that on this laptop, on which Feedback is enabled, I have no registry setting to enable it. But I do have:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Feedback\IncludeEmail = 1
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Feedback\IncludeScreenshot = 1
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Feedback\SentCount = 31
And I would have thought that I’ve sent more than 31 from this computer.
Paul says
Interesting – when I go into the registry, there is no feedback folder under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\feedback. However there is under 15.0.
Anyway, as I said earlier, no big deal for me. I just find it intriguing and interesting.
Jim Chisholm says
Now what would be cool would be to figure out a way to coopt this Feedback mechanism for my own use – to have my users send feedback on my applications to me.
Jon Peltier says
On my other laptop, on which I have Office 2016 and 2013 installed, there was no registry key like this, and the Feedback entry was available on the File tab, but no Smiley icon was present on the ribbon.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Feedback\Enabled
That computer had no smiley icon or Feedback entry on the File tab. It did have a registry setting for Office 2013:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\Feedback\Enabled
and it was set to 0. When I changed it to 1 and restarted Excel, the smiley icon appeared on the ribbon, but there was still no Feedback item on the File tab. I think that first appeared in 2016.
Jon Peltier says
Jim –
I’ve incorporated the same kind of feedback mechanism on my commercial charting add-in.
All entries in the menu open a new email, with the applicable subject line.
Jim Chisholm says
Very nice. Much slicker than my hyperlink-sending emails.
Jon Peltier says
Jim –
Maybe not so slick:
In the calling sub, the address is defined like this: