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

There’s no way I could find today to ‘turn Copilot off’ after it happened to me too, the previous suggestions including group controls, regedit etc. don’t work. I have Win 11 Pro with 365 Personal. I have ended up reverting to the previous semi-annual build which doesn’t have the copilot auto built in to MS Word. I am a PhD student nearly about to submit my thesis and cannot under any circumstances have AI anywhere near it otherwise it will be an automatic fail of four years of my life. It’s that serious.

Microsoft - Copilot NEEDS, absolutely needs, to be able to be functionally turned off for standard users. Please do not put university students at risk. I have been a university lecturer and marker this year too, and accidental AI use in non-AI subjects by students because it’s just sitting there in the software right at the in-line prompt when they are typing, leads to academic misconduct referrals, which is incredibly stressful for students and unnecessarily time consuming for staff. There are some university subjects where AI isn’t yet appropriate - universities are working towards integration but there are parts of some skills that have to be generated separately from AI right now. Please let us have the choice to turn it on and off, so students can turn it off while writing assignments, and turn it on for other uses.

I couldn't agree more - with those (above) who have expressed frustration (and worse) with Copilot.

I've only been aware of it for one day and I've wasted hours today trying to remove it.

Microsoft needs to apply a fix - pronto!

Hello Hannah.Z,

I am experiencing the same frustration as as other respondents to this post.

I wish to deactivate AI Copilot and the guidance provided in your post does not correspond with the information and selections available on my MS Account page.

The only reference to AI on this page (for my account) is an AI Credit Balance.

There is no option provided on my account page to deactivate the AI Copilot feature.

For your reference, my Microsoft 365 applications are all up to date as of today.

Regards

I have the same problem. I do not want this pathetic, ridiculous icon appearing on my word documents and I do not want ANY uninvited AI apps on my computer. I have uninstalled this instrusive app from my computer.

On my MS 365 page I have attempted to disable copilot by logging in, going to settings>sidebar>copilot> and toggling off "show copilot" but it still appears in the toolbar in word documents and the stupid icon still appears on every new line in the document itself. It's incredibly distracting.