How to disable copilot on microsoft office (excel, word, ppt) on Macbook

Thank you SO MUCH.

So now at this point I know there are two three options: you can (1) purchase and download Office 2021 and unsubscribe from Office 365, OR (2) you can now disable Copilot within Office 365. The third option I just learned about is (3) revert your Office 365 subscription to "classic" no-AI-enabled version.

To obtain the "classic" version, you're going to log into your Microsoft account, navigate to the Subscriptions menu, and tell Microsoft you wish to cancel your Office 365 subscription. This will trigger Microsoft to give you options for AI-enabled (Copilot) OR AI-disabled ("classic") Office 365. Select the latter and your "classic" subscription sans Copilot will be initiated. Note that the Copilot icon will still appear in the top menu when you open Word etc., but it will be grayed out.

For those looking for the option to disable Copilot on a Mac in Office 365 without giving up the option of using Copilot, here's what you need to do:

1. In any Office product, go into the main menu (so, in Word, the menu called Word), and click the About tab. You'll get a pop-up that gives all the info about what version of the software you're using.
2. Click the More Info tab on the pop-up. You'll see your device and license codes plus two live links, License Terms and Third Party Notices, then a button that says Refresh License. Click this button. You will be prompted to log into your Microsoft Office 365 account. Do so.
3. Having refreshed your license, you're now going to close out of all Office products and restart the one you were in to refresh the license.
4. Open the Preferences tab. You should now see a Copilot option under Authoring and Proofing tools in Word. Click this link.
5. There is only one item within the Copilot option, which is "Enable Copilot", and it's clicked by default. Unclick it. You've now disabled Copilot.

Personally, I've gone with switching to the classic subscription for the time being. My subscription doesn't renew till December, so I have time to figure out if the pros & cons of having a subscription outweigh the pros & cons of downloading Office 2021 versus maybe switching to one of the Open Office options out there. I'm so sick of big tech companies shoving AI down our throats that this might just be the end of my decades-long loyalty to MS Word.

I went looking for instructions on how to turn copilot off the other day, when I was using Word and found this, apparently for use with any Microsoft 365 app (Windows, not Mac):

1. Select File
2. Select Options
3. Select Copilot
4. Clear the Enable Copilot checkbox
5. Select OK

And that worked. So today, whilst working in Excel and getting heartily sick of that damned icon getting in the way every time I'm trying to type into a cell, I decided to follow the same instructions...except there's no 'Copilot' option in the Excel options list.

I looked at the suggestions for turning it off via the online privacy selections but there's an old msn email address I still use occasionally, so I don't want to turn off all the 'connected experiences'.

At the moment, I'm hoping that some future excel update will add a button to the option list.

Hey Microsoft Moderators - WHERE'S THE UPDATE FOR MAC USERS SO WE CAN DISABLE COPILOT?

See solution below - I have now turned Copilot off!!!

Still frustrated, I was looking in my settings again (January 2025), and there is a new option!

[Moderator's note: This came out with update 2501.]

File Tab > Options (at bottom), then in the Word Options window > Copilot, then uncheck Enable Copilot.

The silly inline prompt was gone, and the Copilot icon in the toolbar greyed out! Yay!

I then right-clicked on the ribbon, and went Customise the Ribbon, then from the Home Tab, I just removed the Group that contained the Copilot Icon, I think it was called Assistance (gone now so not 100% sure).

Hopefully this is now available for other people too!

Thank you. But this doesn't work for Mac Users. There isn't an OPTIONS button in the Mac interface.