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3/25 It's back!
I'm not sure if it works on every document, but it worked on one of mine!
(Edit on 4/26) It works on some documents but not on others... Does anyone else have the same problem?
2/23
Someone in the comment section said "The latest word, as of today, is "The latest update in the bug is that there are still some approvals that the team is waiting on. The Word team is treating this as a high-priority incident and is working to have this restored as soon as possible.". So anyone wondering for any updates, there it is...
Thank you!
(I will try my best to look for any updates given in this comment section)
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Latest report, as of today, is that "there was a change required to switch to a new Bing search API. There are some approvals that are still needed, so the Similarity Checker has been disabled in the Editor Pane. It should no longer be visible for users while the crew works on restoring the functionality."
Please translate into user language. Thanks.
Please translate into user language. Thanks.
An Application Program Interface (API) is essentially a list of the parts of a program (in this case, Bing search) that can be used by other programs, along with the definitions of any data that has to be supplied by the calling program. When something in an API has changed, the other programs that use it must also be changed; otherwise the existing call won't work and an error will occur.
The information that Suzanne quoted means that the Editor code has to be changed to match the new API of Bing search. The changes must be inspected and tested to avoid (or at least try to avoid) unintended trouble that could be caused by interactions with other code. Once that's done, the changes must be approved by managers in the Office, Bing, and Windows teams before it can be released. This was probably slowed by the fact that many Microsoft employees take vacation time in December.
Rather than let the Editor's Similarity Checker continue to display "something went wrong" messages that are caused by the mismatch between the Editor code and the new Bing API, the Similarity item in the Editor will be hidden until the approved changes are available.
But... In Microsoft 365 latest version (version 2312 Build 17126.20132 Current Channel) that I use, the Similarity Checker is still showing in the Editor and still giving the same message. Also, the Insider Channel release notes at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-beta-channel don't mention any change to Editor.
Thanks for this. I took out most of the passive voice verbs, future tense verbs, and other items that tend to make your message less clear. Here's the new version:
The information that Suzanne quoted means that the coder must change the Editor code to match the new API of Bing search. Coders must inspect and test the changes to avoid (or at least try to avoid) unintended trouble that interactions with other code could cause. Once that's done, managers in the Office, Bing, and Windows teams must approve the changes before the team can release it. Many Microsoft employees take vacation time in December probably slowed the process.
Rather than let the Editor's Similarity Checker continue to display "something went wrong" messages that mismatch between the Editor code and the new Bing API caused, the Similarity item in the Editor is hidden until the approved changes are available.
But... In Microsoft 365 latest version (version 2312 Build 17126.20132 Current Channel) that I use, the Similarity Checker is still showing in the Editor and still giving the same message. Also, the Insider Channel release notes at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-beta-channel don't mention any change to Editor.
A later report from our Word contact added that "It looks like the disabling of the Similarity Checker has only taken place for Web apps so far. The crew is working on disabling it for Word Desktop now while they work through restoring functionality."