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

I've just asked ChatGPT and it provided me with a number of workarounds but none of them work. It looks like Microsoft has included Copilot as a core feature. Not as an add-in.

I'm hoping that if enough people are complaining they'll change it so the user gets to decide to disable copilot or not.

NOT HAPPY MICROSOFT!!!!

I have not updated my Microsoft on Mac (auto updates are turned OFF) yet somehow Copilot magically appeared and now I cannot get rid of it! The steps provided do not work (Copilot does not come up on the right side following the steps above). This is SUPER frustrating as Microsoft is illegally making changes to my computer and I have zero control over that! It should be an opt-in, not just someone sitting at Microsoft HQ spreading this rubbish everywhere with the push of a button and then make it absolutely impossible to remove!

THANK YOU!! Your response was incredibly helpful. I didn't know why my already expensive subscription jumped from $139.00 to $179.00 per year and it was because of that intrusive and unwanted co-pilot rubbish. Microsoft should NOT be allowed to hike up the prices in that way. We are sick of Microsoft and they way they have been increasing their prices for less value and are in the process of switching our services to other providers. Goodbye Micro$oft.

Hello everyone in this thread, I've been looking into this and shouting at my computer for a week, and in case its helpful at all, here's a summary of what I understand about this mess (I use a Macbook):

1. Trying to get rid of Copilot has been an enormous disruption for about a week. I wish I could invoice Microsoft for the wasted days.
2. I have read that Australia, New Zealand and a few other countries are Microsoft's crash test dummies--that is, MS is trialing this version of Copilot out on us and will apparently 'learn from us' (without engaging with us at all) and tweak the programme before it goes out to their 'important' markets (sarcasm).
3. YOU CANNOT GET RID OF COPILOT ENTIRELY yet, without reverting to an old version of the Office software, which I'm not prepared to do as I can imagine bigger problems emerging. After trying very hard to do it myself and reading the community messages here and researching online, I believe that all you can do to minimise Copilot is these two things:

A. On a Mac, turn off 'connected experiences' in your Word privacy settings which seems to disable some of the AI-type features and will stop the Copilot icon appearing when you select text, but will NOT entirely remove the icon from the margin.

B. I have not yet tried this but have read about it: Downgrade your subscription to a leaner version if you can. This will activate when your current sub expires, and you will no longer have Copilot--or so they say. I do not think you can have the simpler version activated yet, but you can select it (please correct me if I'm wrong), presumably because they'd lose their Copilot dummies(?) if we opt-out. I hear that the dumber version of Office will cost what you pay now, and (get this) if you keep your current sub (which has the Copilot) you will be charged $40ish extra with your sub renewal, to pay for Copilot! I am definitely downgrading to Classic/old/dumb MSOffice!

There other word processing options, but if you're a Word user they might seem rustic. I am going to use the Apple/Mac writing options (Pages) to minimise my MSWord usage until my changed sub to the Classic version kicks in (or until a real human gets in touch from Microsoft to answer my questions), and if the downgrade has Copilot, that'll be the end of Office365 for me.

Cheers.

Thanks for your work on this.
Re Option A, if you do this, you lose some functionality eg can't save a word doc as a PDF. Not sure what else, but it's too fraught for me to contemplate. I need this, and can't be doing with turning it on and off.

I like your idea of using Pages instead to minimise Word use.

I just need that annoying animated icon to disappear. Did they learn nothing from the hated Clippy??