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

Microsoft service has deteriorated immensely. They no longer seem to care about their customers, only about their profits. This is yet another case of Microsoft getting the better of you by changing its plans, names, and subscriptions at will. They have closed down Skype, which enabled you to make phone calls, and replaced it with Teams, which, of course, does not, unless you have a Business subscription. They will do anything and everything to get more money out of us to increase their profits and give us less service to cut their expenses.

My billing cycle just turned over a week ago. My next annual bill will hit March 2026. Are you saying I have to kiss the $130 I just spent on 2025-2026 goodbye and pay for an entirely new month or year just so I can switch to "classic?" This is all assuming I don't get stuck not being able to choose "classic" once I flush it down the toilet as per advisement.

Also I just now tried to create a new Microsoft 365 subscription with another email, and there's no sign of the word "classic" anywhere. I can't help but feel like this is all a joke at our expense and there is no such thing as classic outside of people insisting it's real because "the site says trust me bro so why not trust it."

UPDATE:

I'm currently speaking to a sales rep who told me this:

"Thank you so much for that, Microsoft 365 Classic that does not include AI at the price point you were paying prior to the price increase. The price is the same as what you were paying previously. But this can only avail on our end. And it's no longer available on the website*. The old version you want to get is no longer available to purchase on the website; we can only process it on our end. Shall we proceed to activate this so, we can refund the new price?"*

Also just a heads up, the delay on those text chats is around 60 seconds but it kicks you off after 300 seconds. It's definitely humans on the other end, so maybe just kindly send a "Thanks for taking care of this" or something every 30 seconds or so as a "bump" just to be on the safe side. Will update once the rep is done, but they did send a refund since the last 130 was deducted around 2 weeks ago.

The Classic option started on January 16, 2025. The relevant Microsoft document says “Downgrade to Microsoft 365 Personal or Microsoft 365 Family Classic: Go to Subscriptions . Sign in with the Microsoft account associated with your subscription, if prompted. Find your current subscription and select Manage > Cancel subscription. To downgrade to another plan with fewer features, select Microsoft 365 Personal Classic or Microsoft 365 Family Classic, or another plan that works for you. Follow the instructions to complete the switch.” (see here). However, when you follow the above instructions, there is no option to downgrade to Classic, only to Basic, which has much fewer options.

Lisa - There are different instructions for disabling Copilot for Mac or for PC. Please scroll down through the posts, and you'll find instructions for both. You can turn off Copilot for the short-term. You also can go into your MS account and cancel MS 365. When you do that, at least it was in the interface when I did this, you also should get a prompt offering that you switch to MS 365 Classic - which does not have Copilot. That is the long-term solution because when you switch to MS 365, it will happen when your subscription renews.

oops sorry

I sent this to the wrong email I guess.

All I want is to get rid of copilot, which I never signed up for ans it is driving me crazy

You can disable Copilot in Word , PowerPoint and Excel by going to File > Options > Copilot then unchecking the box next to Enable Copilot and clicking OK. Access, Outlook, OneNote and Publisher do not yet have this option. Try to keep cool. Going crazy is not a strategy. The only way to fix this is to keep the pressure on Microsoft to do so.