I want to disable Copilot in Word on MacBook Air

I successfully disabled Copilot in Word 365 on my MacBookPro (running Sonoma 14.7.3) as follows:

Word main menu > Preferences

Preferences > Privacy

In Privacy field, search (upper right) Copilot

The Copilot icon will appear, highlighted

Click on the Copilot icon

Unclick “Enable Copilot”

Restart Word

As of Word Version 16.93, Excel version 16.93.2, it should be possible to turn off Copilot individually for these two apps. The tentative schedule for Powerpoint is February 2025, according to Microsoft . They released a new version (16:94) two days ago. I just installed it - and the option appears in Preferences as reported by several.

Note however that in order to get it, you first have to enable "Turn on optional connected experiences", then close all Microsoft products, before restarting Word. After restart, the Copilot option should appear in preferences, so you can disable copilot. After this sequence of magic spells, you may again disable the connected experiences. If you do not first enable connected experiences, you will not get the option to disable Copilot. Great connected experience.

If don't have the Enable copilot checkbox in your preferences but you're seeing the copilot icon and prompt in your document, here's how to get the checkbox to appear. It took me ages to work this out, so I thought I'd share it here.

The process is to update your software, enable copilot fully, then you can fully disable it.

1. Go to Help > Check for updates and update to the latest version. You need 16.93 or later (check your version in Word > About Microsoft Word).
2. Once you've updated, go to Preferences > Privacy and click on Manage Connected Experiences. Use the checkboxes to turn everything on. Click on OK. You'll need to restart Word to apply this change.
3. When you restart Word, go to Preferences > Copilot and the Enable copilot checkbox is there. Uncheck it and all the copilot stuff disappears from your documents.

The only option currently seems to be to revert to a previous version of Office. After chatting with Microsoft for an hour, that was the conclusion. You find previous versions here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac

Do the followoing:

1. Turn off AutoUpdate (Word/Help/CheckForUpdate)
2. Close all office apps
3. Delete the apps with Copilot (Word, PowerPoint)
4. Download and install a previous version. I used the March 12 version (16.83), any version before the introduction of Copilot in your country will probably work.

You're in the drivers set - with no Copilot. At least for now.

I had another look at my Microsoft products more carefully.

I have a Microsoft 365 subscription. My version of Word is:

Version 16.93 (25011212)

When I open Word, under Preferences, Authoring and Proofing Tools ... there is a Copilot icon among the other options. Selecting that Copilot icon brings up a Copilot checkbox, which I can check on and off. When I uncheck it (off), Copilot goes away in Word, although the icon remains on on the Ribbon but it is lightened out.

From what I can tell, Word was last updated January 14, 2025. I have Microsoft 365 on auto update so it happens without me noticing.

Now when I use the Office products, Copilot is completely gone (except for that lightened out Copilot icon on the far right of the ribbon).

I found it wasn't quite that simple. I did as recommended by steve626, and was told that I needed to restart office (ms word) to have that take effect. I did so, but found that copilot was still creepily appearing when editing a doc. I went back to preferences and voila!, there was a copilot preferences area where I could go and uncheck "Enable Copilot" and the annoying copilot stuff went away. So turning off connected experiences and restarting ms-word exposes the Copilot preferences -- which is where you can disable it.

relarion wrote:

Steve, very Microsoft-y indeed! I had gone through those steps. I still get the prompt whenever I open a new document.

After disabling all the Connected Experiences, you also need to remove the CoPilot icon from the ribbon bar. Go to Word > Preferences > Ribbon & Toolbar > Main Tabs > Home > Assistance and remove the Assistance group (remove the group, you cannot remove just CoPilot). Also check Word > Preferences again; there should be a new CoPilot icon there; click on it and disable CoPilot again. That "should" remove all prompts for CoPilot.

Note that if you also use PPT, Excel and/or Outlook you need to repeat these steps in each app. Even when done, there is still an annoying CoPilot icon that remains on the PPT edit screen that so far no one has been able to remove. And unfortunately you need to repeat all this in each user account if you have multiple user accounts on your Mac.

wfd11777 - I followed your suggestions, starting with the process recommended by steve626 and it worked. I can now enable or disable Copilot in Word. Thanks to you both!

To summarize, here is what worked for me:

• In Word:
• Preferences > Privacy > Manage Connected Experiences > Turn off all connected experiences
• Quit all MS applications
• Restart Word
• In Word:
• Preferences > Copilot > Enable Copilot (on/off)

In Privacy, under Connected Experiences, choose Manage Connected Experiences, then uncheck all the Connected Experiences boxes. Going through these layers of nested menus that are not intuitive to do something simple that should be one click is very Microsoft-ish!

this works, but is a bit overkill because it disables other functions too, like the stock-image feature (that I never use, so no problem).

after disabling via Privacy MS still pushes copilot through different interfaces, very annoying

I spent hours trying to solve this. I even contacted MS support and worked with them. Currently, there is NO WAY to turn off the copilot prompt except for installing an older version of MS Office. To do this -

1. Delete MS AutoUpdater from your system library.
2. From https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac download version 16.89 (Sept 10, 2024 update) or lower.
3. Install
4. Make sure the new MSupdater is off.

Yes, agree, forcing copilot on the user is "creepy". I, too, find it hard to concentrate while the copilot prompt is on. I hope MS makes fixes soon.

Here's what worked for me. In Word, go to "Preferences" then "Privacy." Disable the button for "Turn on optional connected experiences." Go back out to "Preferences" and under "Authoring and Proofing Tools," you should now see the "Copilot" button. Click it and you will be able to disable it. Before I disabled "Connected Experiences," the "CoPilot" button did not appear for me either.

I hope this helps.

relarion wrote:

Hey! It worked!

I could have sworn that I had done that before, turning off Connected Experiences and restarting. But this time, after I restarted, I went back to Preferences and saw the Enable Co-Pilot option, which had not been there before. Opened a new document and saw only a blank page. No stalker-icon! Is it possible that they fixed it?

Thanks so much.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-turn-off-copilot-in-microsoft-365-family-and-personal-subscriptions-bc7e530b-152d-4123-8e78-edc06f8b85f1 this link explains that a recent update to Microsoft 365 (the update was released just a few days ago after this thread was started) enabled the checkbox to turn off Copilot in Word. And that for the Mac, Powerpoint and Excel will get that checkbox sometime in February.

If don't have the Enable copilot checkbox in your preferences but you're seeing the copilot icon and prompt in your document, here's how to get the checkbox to appear. It took me ages to work this out, so I thought I'd share it here.

The process is to update your software, enable copilot fully, then you can fully disable it.

1. Go to Help > Check for updates and update to the latest version. You need 16.93 or later (check your version in Word > About Microsoft Word).
2. Once you've updated, go to Preferences > Privacy and click on Manage Connected Experiences. Use the checkboxes to turn everything on. Click on OK. You'll need to restart Word to apply this change.
3. When you restart Word, go to Preferences > Copilot and the Enable copilot checkbox is there. Uncheck it and all the copilot stuff disappears from your documents.

I found something that worked for me just now. First, I updated word for Mac and the other MS apps. Then I opened the Word file with the annoying Copilot BS on. Then I went File>Preferences, where I saw the Copilot symbol listed under Authoring Tools (it's very visible). Click on the Copilot logo and - finally! - you see the magic checkbox for Copilot, which is checked on by default. Uncheck that box. Copilot will be greyed out on the ribbon bar.

I suspect this might be a process that will have to be followed for every single Word doc I open. That sucks, but's better than the alternative.