I want to disable Copilot in Word on MacBook Air

The only way for many users to get rid of Copilot is to switch your subscription to "Classic.," in whatever subscription you have (Personal, Family etc) ie I switched from from Personal to Personal Classic. After switching, I did not lose any functionality or features. I just lost AI, which I did not want, and avoided a $30 a year increase. I wasted many hours on tech support before I was given a solution. I hope to save others this hassle. Simply go to the main webpage of microsoft to find your account and make the change. It's fairly easy to navigate.

GilBGil wrote:

What I write in my Prayer Journal is between God and me, exclusively. If I need any AI help, I'll invoke a platform dedicated to that service for that specific purpose; in the meantime, I don't need an unsolicited algorithm analyzing -- and "learning from" -- how well I'm expressing myself about the layers of personal and family trauma I am processing existentially.

If you are that concerned about privacy, use a pen and paper.

Go to Word, Preferences, Privacy and go to 'Manage connected experiences'. Deselect everything there.

Then go to Word, Preferences again. Now you will see a button 'Copilot'. When you click on that, you can now deselect Copilot

Hey Steve,

Same laptop, same version, same with auto-update, same with greyed-out Copilot icon. Do you have half a gold medallion give to you as a baby? LOL

Seems updates installed overnight, now, like you, I have the option to turn it off in Preferences > Copilot.

Microsoft seems to have gotten the push back this crap deserved and sorted it out, thankfully!

Thanks for sharing!

Ivy

Hi Jack,

You were fast! I did that and it disappeared then I reopened Word and it was back, so I came back to delete my comment...I couldn't but I updated it and didn't realise you'd responded to the first one until today.

Updates installed on my laptop overnight and now the option to turn off CoPilot is there in Preference > CoPilot. Talk about fixing what wasn't broken! I don't know who at Microsoft thought that was a good idea. Anyway, hope you got the update and can now do this as well!

Ivy

No idea why someone hasn't posted this:

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

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-apps/privacy/mac-privacy-preferences

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/manage-windows-copilot

With Enterprise plans, your system administrator controls numerous features via Entra or other software.

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.

Thank you for this. I tried it. It does turn off copilot but unfortuantely doesn't affect what's so **** annoying about it.

Now when I open a blank page and want to write something I still gets this greyed out sentence about Copilot that I definitely don't want to see as a writer. Not at all. I want to see a blank page.

Likewise it doesn't eliminate the stupid icon in the left margin. all it does is disable the program but it keeps all the intrusive features that folks are complaining about.

I just now went back and found what wasn't there yesterday. the Preferences>Copilot. and there I disabled it the thing and voila that worked and I'm no longer seeing any annoying intrusive bs.

What do they pay these geniuses to make these programs? Do they ever take the step of like you know actually testing it with ordinary people which would take about fifteen minutes?? Because the problem would have surfaced immediately. Guess they were in a hurry to roll out this stupid program no one wants.

Just asking. I have no idea how these giant corporations operate but it is so stupid the way they behave.

Thank you for these steps, Steve. They worked for me. CoPilot is still visible as an option on my document, but when I click on it, I'm told to turn on Connected Experiences. I would love to use a different program, but both of my publishers require that I use Word. I will be contacting them about this. I'm sure they are not happy about it, either. My books are listed as having been used to train AI3. Without my knowledge or consent, of course. How anyone can argue that this doesn't violate copyright laws is beyond me. For this manuscript, I'm going to join SSlaunwhite and write it in Pages. Microsoft could so easily have offered an option to turn on CoPilot. The fact that they require an opt out instead is highly concerning.

If you plan on buying a standalone version of MS Office for the Mac, you may want to disable automatic updates from Microsoft or you may end up with CoPilot intruding. From the MS site:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-do-i-deactivate-copilot-in-word-for-the-mac/7622e965-0d27-4e91-8d3f-798df7660f91

We can disable it, they just seem to be doing what they can to prevent us from disabling it (what a surprise). As per wfd11777, you need to go into Word and select Preferences > Privacy. Then go into Manage Connected Experiences and uncheck Turn On All Connected Experiences. Once you've done this, you'll be asked to restart Word. Restart Word and the Co-Pilot will reappear in the new blank document (urgh). Select Preferences AGAIN and you should now see the Co-Pilot icon displayed. Click on Co-Pilot and uncheck Enable. Fingers crossed.

This copilot intrusion happened to me today and before I understood what was happening I saved the document I was editing to OneDrive which I don't normally use. When I eventually found where it was filed, the document was blank! Three hours spent trying to retrieve it with no success. Eventually I worked out how to disable copilot but now face a couple of hours rewriting an article. Does anyone have any ideas if it might be retrievable? I'm being told that I can open an earlier saved version as I don't have enough privileges.