Obvious/Help Center

Collaboration & Comments

Published April 15, 2026 · Last updated April 15, 2026 · 6 min read

Collaboration & Comments

This guide walks you through leaving comments, replying to feedback, and resolving conversations on documents and sheet cells — so your team can work together without leaving Obvious.

Leave a Comment

If you've used comments in Google Docs, this works the same way.

On a document:

  1. Highlight the text you want to comment on.

  2. Click the comment icon that appears in the toolbar. A composer opens at your selection.

  3. Type your comment and press Send. The highlighted text gets a visual mark, and your comment appears in the sidebar.

On a workbook, presentation, or other artifact:

  1. Open the artifact and click the Comments icon in the toolbar.

  2. The comments sidebar opens with a composer ready. Type your comment and press Send.

Comments on non-document artifacts apply to the whole artifact rather than a specific text selection.

Tip: You can also open the comments sidebar from the project level — without any artifact open — to see every conversation across your project in one place.

Format Comments with Markdown

Comments support markdown formatting. You can use the same syntax you'd use in a document to make your feedback clearer.

Supported formatting:

  • **bold** → bold

  • *italic* → italic

  • inline code → inline code

  • ~~strikethrough~~ → strikethrough

  • [link text](https://url) → a clickable link

  • - or 1. at the start of a line → a list

The comment renders the formatted output — your teammates see styled text, not raw markdown syntax.

Tip: Inline code formatting is especially useful when referencing field names, formula syntax, or values from a sheet.

Reply to a Comment

  1. Click a comment thread in the sidebar or click the highlighted text in a document.

  2. The thread expands to show the full conversation. Type your reply in the composer at the bottom.

  3. Press Send. Your reply appears in the thread and teammates get notified.

@Mention a Teammate

Type @ in the comment composer to mention a teammate. A list of project members appears — select a name to notify them directly. Mentioned teammates receive a notification and can click through to the exact comment.

Add Emoji Reactions

Click the smiley face icon on any comment to add an emoji reaction. Click an existing reaction to add yours to the count. Click your own reaction again to remove it.

Reactions work on any comment in a thread — both in the sidebar and in floating comments alongside the document.

Resolve a Thread

When a conversation is done, click the resolve button on the thread. The thread moves from the For you tab to the Resolved tab in the sidebar. The text highlight in the document updates to reflect the resolved state.

Changed your mind? Open the Resolved tab, find the thread, and click unresolve to reopen it.

Edit or Delete Comments

Click the ⋯ menu on your own comment to edit or delete it. Editing replaces the comment text in place. Deleting removes the comment from the thread. You can only edit or delete comments you wrote.

To delete an entire thread, use the ⋯ menu on the thread itself.

Every comment thread has a shareable link. Click Copy link from the thread's ⋯ menu. When someone opens the link, Obvious navigates directly to the artifact and scrolls to the highlighted text.

Comments on Sheet Cells

You can attach comments to specific cells in a sheet — not just to the sheet as a whole. This is useful for flagging individual values, asking questions about a row, or leaving context for a teammate reviewing specific data.

Add a comment to a cell:

  1. Right-click any cell in a sheet.

  2. Select Add comment from the context menu. A composer opens anchored to that cell.

  3. Type your comment and press Send. A small indicator appears in the corner of the cell.

View a cell comment:

Hover over any cell with an indicator to see a preview popover of the comment. Click the indicator to open the full thread in the comments sidebar.

Navigate to a commented cell from the sidebar:

  1. Open the comments sidebar while viewing a sheet.

  2. The sidebar shows comments from the current workbook. Comments attached to cells in this sheet appear in the list.

  3. Click any comment in the list. Obvious scrolls to the cell the comment is attached to.

What happens when a row or column is deleted:

If you delete a row or column that has comment threads attached, those threads are archived automatically. They won't appear in the active comments sidebar, but the conversation isn't lost — archived threads remain in the Archived tab.

Tip: When working in a large workbook, open the comments sidebar while viewing the specific sheet you want to focus on. The sidebar scopes to the artifact you have open.

Tip: Cell highlights — background colors, bold, italic, and text colors you apply to cells — are shared with everyone who has access to the sheet. Any formatting you apply shows up for your collaborators in real time.

The agent and comments

The Obvious agent can see comments in your documents and sheets and work through them like a teammate would.

To put the agent on a comment thread, @mention it in any comment. It reads the thread, understands the context, and responds — or takes action if the comment is asking for a change.

What the agent can do with comments:

  • Respond to feedback — If a comment asks a question or flags something unclear, the agent can reply with an answer or explanation.

  • Apply edits — If a comment requests a change ("fix the formula in this cell," "rewrite this section"), the agent can make the edit and resolve the thread when done.

  • Work through a review — You can leave multiple comments across a document or sheet and ask the agent to work through all of them in one go: "Go through all the open comments and resolve what you can."

The agent operates under the same permissions as any team member — it can only act on content you have access to.

Troubleshooting

The comment icon isn't appearing when I highlight text. Text selection comments are available on documents. For workbooks and other artifact types, open the comments sidebar from the toolbar to leave a comment.

I don't see the cell context menu when I right-click. Make sure you're clicking directly on a cell, not on a row number or column header. Right-clicking a header opens a different menu. Cell-level commenting requires the sheet to be in normal view (not a filtered or locked state).

My comment on a cell disappeared. If the row or column the cell belonged to was deleted, the comment thread is archived automatically. Check the Archived tab in the comments sidebar to find it.

I @mentioned a teammate but they didn't get notified. The teammate needs to be a member of the project to receive mention notifications. Check their access under Share in the project header. If they're not yet a member, add them first, then re-send your comment.

Still stuck? Email help@obvious.ai.

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