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

I agreee

YUP. Microsoft, you SCREWED UP BIG TIME. Develop some ethics and take care of your customers or you are going to lose even more customers.

And if you turn off connected experiences all of sudden it won't work across devices WHICH IS THE WHOLE POINT OF 365. I know can't get excel to open on my second computer so I can put some very important information into a spreadsheet. So now I am not even getting what I ALREADY PAY FOR.

Microsoft -- if you ever read this -- this was a COLOSSAL BLUNDER. Put it back the way it was and let people UPGRADE to CoPilot if they so choose.

OK but did your downgrade to "Classic" start as soon as you switched? Because the problem with that "solution" is that you'll still be stuck with this invasive AI until your subscription renews. In addition, I just tried signing up for the free-standing version of the Office Suite. The Microsoft website says in writing that you can sign up for the one-time payment option and get rid of Copilot. I just did that, and NOPE. Copilot is still there. So Microsoft is blatantly LYING on its website.

It's really frustrating seeing the SAME questions being asked over and over here! Doesn't anyone read back into earlier questions before trying to re-invent the wheel here?! As one who's battled copilot for months now and finally arrived at a solution, I can say with confidence that this is what you need to do, and it's been said by others too:

1. Forget trying to turn off copilot on your current subscription. Even if you think you find a way of doing it (turning off connected experiences etc), you are only masking copilot while STILL PAYING for it because your subscription includes it. That is, you are still paying the premium amount for an AI-inclusive Microsoft sub. And who knows, MS might add Copilot back into your sub on subsequent updates. Why pay for it if you don't want it and don't use it?
2. So, you need to hit 'cancel subscription' in your account and then you will get the option to downgrade to the 'classic' version of 'family' or 'personal' 365, which is your sub before they added copilot. You will ONLY get this option if MS thinks you want to cancel. They do not publicize the classic version as one of the subscription options so don't bother looking for it. Again, you have to select 'cancel' your sub to get the cheaper non-AI version.
3. NB: Before I did the above, I first entered the chat at the bottom right of my account page (whether that's an AI assistant or not) and asked the question: if I downgrade to 'classic' will there definitely be no AI / copilot attached to my account during my 'classic' subscription? And the chat assistant said "that is correct" I took a screen shot of that reply. And then I went ahead with the downgrade to 'classic'.
4. The downgrade to classic gives me time to explore migrating my docs to Libre Office and to learn how to use that software, because unlike others here, I am very low-tech and also weary of immediately and exclusively bringing my carefully formatted MSWord docs into Libre. I definitely intend to move away from MS Office though because this copilot biz is totally immoral and I don't want to give them my money any longer than I must. I hope that helps stop the repetition here!