Forum Discussion
How do I turn off Copilot in Word documents?
I don't need Copilot in my word documents and I don't need the copilot icon stalking me on every page when I begin to type. Its very distracting. How do I disable Copilot?
111 Replies
This is Microsoft's MO. Copilot is jammed in your face just like Windows 11's taskbar is jammed into that one place on the screen and cannot be moved. They don't care, they're making more and more money in parallel with time passing.
I wrote the below out of sheer exasperation of not being able to turn this icon off.
.
Copilot you are a pain in my side
As you follow me wherever I slide
Your icon poking its nose in where it doesn’t belong
You can go away now and run along
You are a constant distraction to my view
Can’t you just do one and shoo
Turning you off is no joy
Time for a new deploy
My frustrations written in rhyme and prose
When I really wish I could just make it doze
This visual disturbance I can do without
Now all I am left with is pulling my hair out
This icon is sending me around the twist
I really hope you get my gist
Microsoft step up to the plate
Send this icon to purgatory state……
Oh I do really love this.
Plot twist: was it written by copilot?
Ha ha, now that would be a little cheeky wouldn't it
But no, I have actually been writing poetry for years and this one was written out of frustration
It's distracting me because my mouse keeps on jumping back a few characters after every word I type. I'm going to move to Google Docs, after being with Word for 30+ years. Also I've had to move to Google Drive from One Drive because I can't login to One Drive anymore on my my laptop and can't access any support from MS.
Could Microsoft introduce a toggling feature for Copilot in Office files, allowing users to easily turn it on when they need it and turn it off when they don’t?
That would be a good move and resolve the problem.
Which means it will never happen.
I managed to disable a little bit of copilot functionality, I went back to the system internals website and downloaded and app called process monitor, and discovered that word was talking to a file called WordCopilot.js found under FA000000139, (Full path C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\Office16\sdxs\FA000000139) removing this file doesn't break word and it disables *some* of copilot functionality, I think if I spend a bit more time with it and get a bit more surgical with it we might be able to remove the feature entirely. 😁
I managed to disable the annoying copilot dingbat in Word! 😲 But I had to resort to extreme measures, for whatever reason it's disabled on my work computer, or my work computer never got the update, although when I tested further it seems they are the same version, so I took a copy of the version I have at work, copied it from the program files, and then deleted the version that was in my program files and then pasted the version from work and it worked! I can't believe it! it worked, free at last of this wretched dingbat.
My next step will be running a diff on both versions, (something has to be different), if I can isolate the file or DLL, we could potentially build a patch and get rid of this gross visual virus that's been tormenting my word cursor for the last couple of weeks.
I'm just so relieved right now. 😁😁
I also disabled updates on word, and I can confirm that it is logged in with my personal account.
Edit: there is definitely something in the applications configuration, that's different, I tested it in PowerPoint and I got the dingbat for all of a few seconds before it disappeared.
I'm so over companies forcing their will on us and charging us more. I couldn't disable it, so I'm deleting Office 365 and will be using the Mac alternative from now on.
Please microsoft get rid of the floating icon, it's impacting my productivity!!
OKay so all you need to to is go to 'Add or remove programs' on your computer and uninstall it (why did I not think of this).
For some of us, that option doesn’t exist. Like, literally doesn’t exist. It’s why I had to rollback versions to the September major update where it wasn’t embedded in the way it is now. I didn’t subscribe to Copilot/have a subscription where I ever paid for it or requested it, it was just suddenly there one day as a free trial auto-embedded in Word with no way to uninstall it. All I wanted was to be able to have it off in Word for my academic work. Are you using 365 online or the desktop version of Word please? If it is the desktop one, which version are you using please and what subscription level? I would love to be back up to date with my software, but need the option for Copilot to be completely off for academic work.
That' so annoying... it says I have version 2410 of Word although it does say there is an update available and now I don't want to do it! I'm on the Family subscription which has just gone up by $5 a month. I've switched to Family classic which doesn't seem to include AI (I replied to someone else with a screenshot) - I pay monthly so am able to switch. But if I do all this and copilot is still there, I am done with Office
I can't believe there are aren't more people complaining about copilot ruining Microsoft Word completely. I can't do a single thing without that annoying copilot getting in the way of what I wanted to do and there is no way to remove it and it is absolutely ridiculous and totally frustrating. I am not very technical and I have not really got the capacity to follow anything too technical in terms of removing this. It certainly doesn't look like a simple process from what I have read here. If anyone's got any ideas about how we can put pressure on Microsoft to make it easy not to have copilot then that would be fantastic. I wonder if anyone is interested in launching legal action against word because this is pretty unfair and really damaging to one's mental health. I think it would be an interesting claim. I've got a law degree and a little bit of spare time for something worthy like this. I'm based in Australia though.
Problem is the people who wrote the software for copilot may have had software skills, but that doesn't mean they had business skills.
As others have pointed out, Academics are supposed to present material to the public without any assistance. from others.
Students submitting their work will have the same problem; many industries will be disadvantaged.
You could try writing to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which administers the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.
This Act addresses Unconscionable Conduct like gouging credit cards, taking monthly payments until the "subscription" expires.
To update... I did the subscription downgrade but still had the distracting prompt on every Word document.
My subscription is annual so it will not downgrade for about a year.
I uninstalled and reinstalled MS 365 but still had the prompt.
I used the Office Deployment Tool to install an older version of MS 365. I used version 18025.20096 which is a September build I think. There might be a newer version you could use.
The Copilot prompt is no longer there in my Word documents. Success!
Quite a bit of messing around for something so intrusive that was added without my consent, especially when it came with a $40/year fee I didn't agree to or get informed about either, with a clearly deliberately deceptive process for reverting to the plan I did consent to.
I think hitting us with the copilot prompt is probably legitimate if we can opt out.
But the undisclosed (or sneakily disclosed, maybe) $40 additional subscription fee that requires you to click on "cancel subscription" just to (a) discover your annual cost has been increased and (b) discover that you can revert to the one you wanted is an outright deceptive business practice by Microsoft that I would think is unlawful in at least some jurisdictions (including where I live).I just cancelled my subscription (paid for until 11 Feb 2025), but there is no option for subscribing to a version without CoPilot. Or price in Australian $ went from $109 to $159. So unless there is a fix to this idiocy before expiry the choice before me is to resume billing with its $50 increase just before expiry, or abandon MS 365 for personal use; the company can then provide a subscription for work use while I adopt another word processor for my normal writing.
Yes, that’s the same retrograde rollback build I chose too.
