How to disable Copilot for all applications - Mac

Just confirming that I've tried all of this in office 365 on a mac and the proposed solutions do not work.

Everything in connected experiences is disabled, I've restarted, and I still cannot make this go away.

Can anyone confirm a method to remove this from Word?

Good news MS Office users... I can confirm that there IS a solution to this, for MS (Office) 365 subscribers at least.

Firstly, I've just wasted two and a quarter hours of my life in a text conversation with Microsoft tech support, who did not have a clue how to actually disable Copilot. I repeatedly said that the recommended actions don't work before they finally stopped barraging me with all the usual useless, unwanted "I'm sure I can help you to solve this", "Let me see what I can do to help", "I hope you're having a great day" platitudes.

However, I eventually discovered this solution. Be aware that it wasn't free, but for me it was worth it:

I sign outed of MS Office apps.

Went into my MS 365 account, made sure auto renewal was turned off and cancelled my subscription.

I signed up for an MS 365 CLASSIC (or MS 365 Family CLASSIC) account. These Classic accounts do not have the Copilot and other AI functionality that MS is trying to force on us all.

The Classic subscription may not be offered on every account page (it wasn't on mine. I had to contact MS sales).

Once I had signed up to the Classic subscription and it was confirmed, I started up one of the MS Office apps and signed in.

Copilot was gone. For me, anyway.

A couple of caveats:

I'm using Office for Mac (today has highlighted one of the reasons why I infinitely prefer the Apple to Microsoft ecosystem), but I'm assuming it will work for Windows users.

I had to sacrifice three months of my pre-paid MS 365 account, so it wasn't a free solution.

In the end I had to get MS Accounts to cancel the previous account, who tried very hard to do as little work as possible by getting me to wait until it expired. I had to insist they cancel it immediately.

But Copilot is gone and, as someone who spends 12 hours or so a day with their face in Word and Excel, I'm happy.

PS One more thing... the Classic subscriptions cost less than the standard ones with all the unwanted AI rubbish.

Mac user here. After scouring a few threads, the following solution worked for me:

• Open Word and turn off automatic updates.
• Delete the Word app.
• Go to this page: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/update-history-office-for-mac
• Download this version of Word: 16.89.1 (24091630), September 17, 2024
• Install new version of Word.
• Open it, quit, open it again.
• Success! For me anyway, the copilot icon has vanished and I'm back to Word working as I want it to.

Thanks everyone for all the helpful suggestions.

How come all of the recommended options do not exist in my version of MS Word? I am running Version 16.93 (25011212). There is no Word> Preferences - Copilot in my version of Word.

Nor is the instructions from the below response work. Are you sure we are to turn on the experience?:

Refer to the following steps:

(Copilot disabled): Turn off Connected Experiences

If you are using Office for Mac, open any Office application and select the application menu (for example, Word or Excel) > > Preferences > Privacy.

1. Go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > “Privacy Options. This displays a checkbox for “Turn on optional connected experiences”.
2. You will then see the Privacy Settings dialog box with a checkbox to “Enable optional connected experience”. Deselect “Enable optional connected experience”.
3. Restart the Microsoft 365 application

Went through the usual Microsoft multi hour time suck today- to be told they are aware of this issue of the prompt not going away after disabling. Was told it would be addressed in next update.