How to disable or remove Copilot in Office 365 Personal

Hi Dan,

My due date is next month, so I'm sure that is the reason why I was offered the Family Classic. Even though I took it, it does not take effect until the current Family version with Copilot expires in January '25 and that is also when the fee $139.00 is due.

I wrote to the ACCC in November and received the following lengthy reply 5 days later see below.

I also used the Feedback option in 365 under File, and voiced my objection to Microsoft.

Stephen

ACCC Reply

Thank you for writing to us about Microsoft. We have recorded the details of your report. I acknowledge that you are reporting broader concerns about the conduct of Microsoft and have made a record of this. However, we can also offer you information about your consumer rights and how to resolve a dispute with a business, if you wished to pursue an individual remedy.

Your next steps

If writing to the business doesn’t resolve your dispute, we would suggest you contact NSW Fair Trading. Unlike the ACCC, which focuses on broad and national issues, your local consumer protection agency may be able to help resolve your dispute by negotiating an outcome. Find out more about how to make a complaint to NSW Fair Trading on its website.

If they’re unable to help, you may need to take your complaint to your state or territory small claims tribunal

Your rights: match description

If a business describes a product to you, the description must be accurate. A business can describe a product in writing, verbally, with a picture or with a video. If a product you buy does not match its description, the business must fix the problem.

Repair, replacement or refund – faulty product

You have the right to ask for a repair, replacement or refund if a product fails to meet a consumer guarantee.

You can ask a business for your preference of a free repair, replacement or refund, but you are not always entitled to one. For example, the consumer guarantees do not apply if you got what you asked for but simply changed your mind, found it cheaper somewhere else, decided you did not like the purchase or had no use for it.

If a product you own has a minor problem, the business can choose to offer you a refund, repair or replacement. If the seller chooses to fix the problem, they must do this free of charge and within a reasonable time. If the seller refuses to fix the problem or takes too long, you may be able to get it fixed by someone else and recover the reasonable costs from the seller.

If a product you own has a major problem, you have the right to ask for your choice of a replacement or refund. Alternatively, you can choose to keep the product and negotiate a reduced price for the drop in value from what you initially agreed to pay—this may mean asking for some of your money back if you have already paid. You may also be able to claim compensation for any foreseeable losses resulting from the faulty product.

A product has a major problem when it:

• has a problem, or series of problems, that would have stopped someone from buying it if the problem had been known
• is unsafe
• is significantly different from the sample or description
• does not do what the business said it would, or what you asked for, and cannot easily be fixed.

Check out our website for more detailed information about the consumer guarantees, including a retailer or manufacturer’s obligations, how to return a faulty product and exceptions.

Your report: what the ACCC does with this information

The ACCC uses reports from the public, as well as other sources of intelligence, to inform our enforcement work. You can read more about how we prioritise our work on our website.

Please note, the ACCC generally does not comment on our work or what we do with the information we receive from reports. We will only contact you again if we require further information.

To keep up-to-date on public announcements from the ACCC, you can subscribe to our email alerts.

We hope the information we have provided is helpful.

Yours sincerely

I just went through the cancellation process for my Family subscription but was not offered the option to "Choose a plan that's right for you". That may be because my renewal date is 1 August. I do not want this function embedded with my services - mainly because of the irritating prompts, but also because of the access to my data, and the additional charges.

I am sure that many users will not realise that they are suddenly being charged an additional $40 for functionality that they may not even want. I encourage anyone that is concerned with this change to lodge a complaint with the ACCC to ensure they have visibility that there is a problem impacting Australian and, it would appear, New Zealand, customers.

This will not fix the problem for you immediately, for that you will need to engage with Microsoft to revert your subscription. Do not accept, "No" for an answer as this is a simple configuration change for Microsoft to make on your behalf. It is very disappointing that they have decided to implement this the way they have. And all they needed to included from my perspective was a "turn on", "turn off" Copilot functionality button.

Totally Agreement from me

I removed automatic subscription renewal and won't be renewing my office subscription

I have moved my email to thunderbird, I have installed libre office products

I have found that there is not a lot of difference in fact libre Office Draw is much better than Visio

I am in process of migrating to Linux Fedora and when done will be getting rid of Microsoft full stop.

Basically AI is about collection of our information which can then be on sold for profit (Don't believe their ****)

Without this AI will not work.

Restore your version of Office

• Close all Office software, in the "Start Menu", find "Command Prompt" (or "cmd"), right-click and select "Run as administrator" ;
• At the command prompt, type the following command and press Enter: cd %programfiles% \Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun
• Then enter the following and press Enter Officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.17531.20120 This will bring Office back to a stable version in February 2024.

If the above steps are successful, you'll be able to view Office version 17531.20120 under File -> Account -> Product Information. If another version is displayed here, it means that some of the steps were not executed successfully, please refer to the previous method and try again. After restoring, open any Office application, such as Word, click File -> account. On the right side, check the "Microsoft 365 and Office Updates" heading , click the "Update Options" button, and select the "Disable Updates" option to disable the auto-update feature. Please consider turning on automatic updates again after successfully switching to Classic to avoid updating again to a new version with Copilot.