How do you reply to someone who has replied to your forum post?

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Posted on by anthonys123

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I'm having a heck of a hard time with this new forum. Is it at all possible to respond to someone who has responded to your post?

Am I in the right place to ask this question?

OMG - and PLEASE tell me there's a setting to properly put the last comment at THE BOTTOM of the post. Why does Microsoft insist on changing decades-long standards of communication??

UPDATE Jan 2, 2025:

Microsoft has to change this back. I can not comprehend how to use this forum. If someone responds to my post, I want to respond to their message. I do not want to mention them. There is no way for people to understand the conversation if you're just mentioning another user. I swear, it's like aliens dropped in from outer space and created this forum without first speaking to humans to learn how they communicate.

A response to someone should ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS be BELOW BELOW BELOW the original comment.

ORIGINAL POST

> Response A

> Response 1 to A

> Response 2 to A

> Response 1 to 2

> Response B

> Response C

> Response 1 to C

This is the worst implementation of a user forum I have ever witnessed and Microsoft's inability to understand this in the planning phase, let alone months after deployment, should be grounds for firing the entire division responsible for this disaster.

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Topic creation & management

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Expiscornovus 33,195 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Yes, that should be possible. You can test that in this thread if you want, just try and respond to my reply.

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lbendlin 8,479 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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"Nobody knows" (N. Bargatze)

It's one of the many gaps of the new forum. You can reply to the thread, but not to an individual post in the thread.

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Expiscornovus 33,195 Most Valuable Professional on at

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@lbendlin, out of interest, what is/was the benefit of replying to an individual post in the old forums?

I never used that because afaik posts in a thread where sorted on post date descending in the old forums. Or did you guys use that feature because it trigger a notification to the user? 🙂

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anthonys123 457 on at

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@Expiscornovus There is no option to reply to you and I'm pretty sure just using the @ symbol does nothing.

And, because your particular name is a longer unfamiliar word, it's not very easy to ensure I've typed it correctly. Why isn't there just a REPLY button below the comments like there used to be?

Moreover, I'm not even getting any notifications about these posts in my own topic even though I have all notifications enabled. This site is absolute trash now. Hopefully more people move over to Reddit.

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lbendlin 8,479 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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@Expiscornovus (yeah, I know, funny) - often threads involve more than two people and you want to make sure the participants of the discussion know who a particular response is addressed to.

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Expiscornovus 33,195 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I totally agree with you guys that it is missing those features when having a conversation with multiple people in a single thread, it would be useful to get those back 🙂

I was just trying to understand how you were using that feature in the previous forum. Like mentioned, I never used that feature. I only used the @ symbol to reply to somebody in the previous forum.

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anthonys123 457 on at

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Ok - so apparently the answer is that you can't?

You cannot respond to someone in a technical support forum? I mean... WTAF? Hasn't this feature been present since the literal creation of the internet?

I just do not understand how Microsoft could release (has the perpetual habit of releasing) a half-baked replacement for stuff that works perfectly fine.

I'd genuinely like to understand how this company operates. Nearly every day, I am struggling with something Microsoft has changed for no good reason. Things are just broken everywhere I turn. There are no observable benefits to me whatsoever; only an increasing level of confusion and frustration (for myself, my boss, and my entire company) as I need to push my assigned tasks further and further down the road.

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allan_t 310 on at

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I agree with your frustration. I've spent the last 15 minutes trying to find out what I was doing wrong because I couldn't tag a person who asked a question in my forum post.

This new forum format is a big step backwards in my opinion.

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Vinoth Selvam 1,590 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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We can only reply to the Post. Presently cannot reply to someone directly.

Just mention the name of the person and reply to the Post.

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anthonys123 457 on at

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@Vinoth Selvam I'm trying that but it doesn't do anything (as mentioned previously). Are people seeing different versions of the forum?

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