Remove copilot icon that appears when I click in Onenote

It is totally uacceptable that Microsoft has installed Copilot in all the Office apps without asking for our acceptance. I don't want ANY AI in my apps automatically, I want to choose myself, if I want to use AI.

Remove the automatic installation of Copilot NOW! , and give us the opportunity to make our own choisies. You will loose subscribers this way.

I'm starting to use Copilot extensively. However, the icon that jumps near wherever I click in OneNote seems unnecessary and distracting.

Worse, I'm using OneNote locally, not in harmony with OneDrive. That means the three options shown when the icon is clicked are useless to me. I'm met with, "Copilot does not support local content." (Those options are: Summarize page, Create a task list, and Rewrite page, with "Take notes with Copilot" grayed out.)

Additionally, the icon might be confusing when screenshots are sent to others.

Finally, the same functionality is available without the icon. Just right-click in OneNote and hover on Copilot in the context menu to see the same three choices. Two clicks either way.

Please fix!

Reformat your hard drive to turn off Copilot? You've got to be kidding me.

This is the latest **** from Microsoft that has finally made me cancel my subscription to Office.

It is absolutely unacceptable that this is being forced on users without an easy option to opt out of it.

It doesn't even sound legal.

Unfortunately, my wife must have Word for the docx format and she has no desire to learn any other email program than Outlook - so I'm digging out an old Office 2010 disk and sticking it on her computer.

It will work, just won't get updates.

But will anyone tell me how differently they are creating documents (or using any part of Office) than they were in the year 1995?

I thought not.

Disgusting.

In one of my earlier posts, I said I had the option of reformatting my PC. I just wanted to report back after trying that. Unfortunately, there was no workflow that allowed me to prevent Copilot from installing in this way into OneNote, Word, etc.. I took every opportunity to suppress all “connected experiences” or whatever they say in Privacy Settings. I immediately uninstalled Copilot after the first boot up. Somehow it made it into my setup. To be clear, when I use OneNote, I see the Copilot icon and yellow banner at the top of the window reminding me of the settings I chose.

Since this was a fresh install, I figured why not try using New Outlook again. When I couldn’t reorder my accounts, I remembered why I had abandoned New Outlook previously and switched to Old Outlook (again). I share this because sometimes I honestly forget how frustrated I’ve been in the past. But the lesson here is that Microsoft’s handling of this Copilot roll-out is consistent with previous roll-outs. However, in this case, it is particularly unsettling how they are pushing Copilot within the app (icon + banner).

I say without a shred of pretense, I am receiving a loaner Mac on Friday of this week and will be trialing Mac OS for the first time in my life after over 30 years of using Windows. I have already begun trialing Linux on another laptop. Based on the number of comments in this thread, I suspect others are feeling similarly. Maybe in the past we’ve eaten our feelings and gone along with it, but this time Microsoft might “find out”, as they say.