I want to disable Copilot in Word on MacBook Air

Yeah I was wondering if anybody mentioned... the Free LibreOffice, it handles MS Office files like Word & Excel, & Page Layout…

https://www.libreoffice.org/

This worked for me, yay! I turned off the connected experiences, restarted, and was finally able to see copilot in Preferences. Disabled that sucker so fast! Thank you.

I also find that feature very annoying so I researched the answer. To disable Copilot in Microsoft Word on a Mac, open your Word document, go to File > Options > Copilot, and then uncheck the "Enable Copilot" box. I'm happy to report it works!

You can find more detail here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-turn-off-copilot-in-microsoft-365-family-and-personal-subscriptions-bc7e530b-152d-4123-8e78-edc06f8b85f1

Carol B. wrote:

I also find that feature very annoying so I researched the answer. To disable Copilot in Microsoft Word on a Mac, open your Word document, go to File > Options > Copilot, and then uncheck the "Enable Copilot" box. I'm happy to report it works!

I just double-checked in Word. I have no "File>Options". I also followed the instructions in the article you linked to, which say go to Preferences > Authoring and Proofing Tools > Copilot. I don't have Copilot there, either. So, I'm not sure what I would do if I wanted to turn it off. Fortunately, I don't.

Well then, we are back to Barney-15E's suggestion. Contact Microsoft. Somehow I now only see the Co-Pilot icon at the top right of any Word document I'm working on. It's no longer popping up on its own. Maybe if you disregard it enough times, it goes away?

Disabling the CoPilot functionality (if you can) in Microsoft 365 will not change Microsoft's decision to increase the subscription prices for personal and family. Single-purchase Office 2021/2024 for Mac suites have no access to CoPilot and their pricing remains the same.

Exactly! Creepy! That's what I felt. I write, I need to get to my words. I pay Microsoft for the privilege. And suddenly I have this AI ‘thing’ blocking my human way. Yuk!!!!

And help! ;-) and actually help ‘cause I can’t use Microsoft atm

Thanks to all of you who joined in on this Microsoft travesty with the Co-Pilot. IMO the sad truth is MS does NOT want to make it easy, even impossible, to delete it.

Monique wrote, "i'm cancelling my subscription to Word, at least for now. creepy, intrusive, no way to turn off? word is hard enough to use lately in all honesty. i'm disappointed."

Me as well. Going forward, I'm using Apple's Pages (which seems to be becoming easier to use). I was disturbed when MS redesigned (sic) the search function, requiring us to go through dropdown menus and multiple clicks to perform a task which worked perfectly and simply before. And for me it had a danger: if I didn't clear the popup box and went back to writing, it overwrote the word unless I clicked the red dot to close it.

The point being, did the "Microsoft/Word/365 etc. user community" ask for these changes, or were they they product of some junior programmer who lacked an understanding of how PEOPLE use word processing software? I'll stop my rave about workflow process here and just say, "if it isn't broke, it doesn't need to be fixed."

JackBRochester wrote:

The point being, did the "Microsoft/Word/365 etc. user community" ask for these changes, or were they they product of some junior programmer who lacked an understanding of how PEOPLE use word processing software? I'll stop my rave about workflow process here and just say, "if it isn't broke, it doesn't need to be fixed."

That sounds like something to ask in the Microsoft forums or by contacting Microsoft.

Perfect - thank you. Disabling Connected Experiences and restarting resulted in the 'Enable Copilot' checkbox to appear and be switched off. The checkbox remains even after re-enabling Connected Experiences.

For me, these steps disable CoPilot but don't remove the shadow icon from the left margin. It's at least a start! I have also logged in to both my Apple ID and Office 365 accounts and left feedback. For now that is all I can control, but seriously thinking about moving to a different word-processing environment after being a Word user since back in the DOS days.

I am so furious at that company right now. The nerve of them, putting this disgusting garbage on my computer without an option to turn it off!

And no, there is no option. All the suggestions here apply to some machines, apparently, but not mine.

They don't even have tech support!

No, they don't - I've tried to contact them. And I resent not being able to install a purchased copy of Word on my desktop and laptop without buying two licenses.

They've lost us as customers, and I've been using Word since the '80s.