Files Needing Attention to replace the Upload Center in Office
The Upload Center, that annoying little extra in modern Office is being closed down. It’s being replaced with ‘Files Needing Attention’ alerts within Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Visio.
The Upload Center controls documents being uploaded from Office to online storage like OneDrive and SharePoint.
If you haven’t noticed Upload Center, it appears as a little orange icon on the taskbar or system tray when there’s a problem.
The most common problem is a version conflict, where the local and online versions of the document have got out of sync in ways that Office can’t resolve.
At the moment, if Office can’t upload a file there’s no explanation in Word, Excel or PowerPoint. You have to know about Upload Center, open it and fix the trouble. That was always a nasty kludge which needed fixing.
Microsoft is ‘retiring’ the Upload Center starting in mid-October 2019.
Files Needing Attention
Instead, there’ll be a new part of the File | Open pane, ‘Files Needing Attention’ will appear when necessary.
Source: Microsoft, cropped by us.
The file has changes which aren’t yet uploaded to the server
Right-click on a document and choose either:
Open – opens the locally saved version of the document. From there you can try uploading again or getting the online revisions to merge.
Discard Local Version – removes the local copy of the document.
What’s Missing
What’s seems to be missing are two choices possible in the Upload Center.
Resolve Document – opens the local version and tries to merge with any changes from the online copy of the document.
The workaround with ‘Files Needing Attention’ is to open the local document and, hopefully, it will bring in any changes from the online version. Track Changes | Show Markup should reveal the changes.
Open both versions – lets you see both documents (local and online) to compare for yourself or use any compare document option.
The workaround with ‘Files Needing Attention’ is to open the local document and then try opening the online document via File | Open.
When?
It started rolling out to the Insiders community in mid-October 2019, and Microsoft expects to finish the change by the end of December 2019.
Files Needing Attention appeared in Office 365 for Windows version 1910, build 12130.20344.