You can't turn off Copilot in the web versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint

Posted by artbristol 10/30/2025

You can't turn off Copilot in the web versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint(support.microsoft.com)

134 points | 45 comments

normalaccess 10/30/2025|

That's because AIs can't survive by eating their own output. The only solution they know to ward off model collapse is more human input. They need you to use AI to feed the beast. And if it's built into your office apps, they get that data for free.

That's part of why every service and system are getting integrations, It's not for us it's for data harvesting.

In the end that's what "Windows Recall" will be used for. Access to every moment of every user for every app... Can you imagine the training data that would provide? An AI that could run any program ever created.

sershe 10/31/2025||

I work in MSFT although not in office org. Based on my experience, the reason is far more trivial. Someone has a half year goal (KR) that says I/my team will increase engagement by N% from X to Y. Some people, whom I don't respect, when presented with a goal like that immediately start doing this (tfa) kind of stuff. Many people, when towards the end of the period some of their genuine (i.e. delivering good stuff) bets don't pan out and the numbers don't number, start doing things like this or generally throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

I bet there was a meeting where someone axed the off button because numbers.

fingerlocks 11/1/2025|||

I did a brief stint in office and back this up. There’s a no malicious grand scheme, just the the loudest mouth in the room this quarter calling the shots. It’ll be someone else in 6 months demanding a different color of shit thrown at the wall.

moritzwarhier 10/31/2025||||

> Based on my experience, the reason is far more trivial. Someone has a half year goal (KR) that says I/my team will increase engagement by N% from X to Y.

How is does this contradict the comment you are replying to?

sershe 11/1/2025||

It implies there's no nefarious intent to collect some training data. In my area at least the only user data I'm aware of is used for measurement of engagement in anonymized aggregated form. Engagement metrics still exist, because supposedly on yet higher level they translate to revenue, not because of training (unless you count thus feature works do more of it as training). I assume the office org is not different.

benterix 10/31/2025|||

> "increase engagement"

It's hard to follow for me. Increase engagement in... office apps? For why?!

rcxdude 10/31/2025|||

Because it increases the prestige of your department when you can say 'we developed features which are now used by X% of users'. If you've ever wondered why every new feature in a Microsoft product seems to need to be used, this is why. It's so the team that implemented it can justify themselves.

xigoi 10/31/2025|||

> Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

— Melvin Conway

soupfordummies 10/31/2025|||

Probably more like increase engagement of Copilot. Microsoft is basically all-in on AI/Copilot.

cyanydeez 10/30/2025||

At this moment in time, just sounds like cyber fascism

jandrese 10/30/2025||

I switched entirely to Libreoffice a few years ago and am still waiting to slam into that "this feature is only found in real MS Office" wall that everybody told me was coming.

I don't think I'm going to switch back over OneDrive or Copilot integration.

RandomBacon 10/30/2025||

The only issue I've run into is in Spreadsheet vs Excel:

I would like to multi-color a cell.

I believe Excel does this by dividing the cell diagonally and coloring each triangle differently.

In Spreadsheet, I just use a solid background and then a different color border.

Projectiboga 10/31/2025|||

The only feature I miss from Word is their auto-format, which can take an unformatted or badly formatted peice of text and generally clean it up nicely.

NemoNobody 10/31/2025||

This is primarily what I use copilot for!

DeepYogurt 10/31/2025|||

Libreoffice has been fine for most use cases for over a decade. It's honestly just the UX that needs work

UnserMannInK 10/30/2025||

Im still waiting as well. And while I’ve found it to be infuriating at times it is still better than „the real“ Office for everything I do.

antiloper 10/30/2025||

Copilot is the most incompetent AI tool I've ever used, which is bizarre since you'd think with the Microsoft/OpenAI partnership they'd make it so that Copilot uses the ChatGPT model.

It's most egregious on Azure, which has a copilot button on every page, and anytime I try to ask it about a precise configuration question for a resource, it NEVER answers correctly. So you have to search on whatever set of microsoft Q&A platforms, stackoverflow questions, and github issues/discussions to maybe find an answer like in the prehistory of 2020.

meetingthrower 10/31/2025||

Or how about the excel copilot which can't do anything inside a cell???? You can't call it in a formula either.

Or how about outlook copilot, which can't do the unbelievably simple task of figuring out when someone asks for a meeting at 1pm tomorrow and you press make invite to actually pre-fill 1pm tomorrow as the meeting time????? ARGH!

And we are worried about fast takeoff and the singularity? Give me a break.

curioussquirrel 10/30/2025||

Azure copilot is really something. It can't see the context of the page it's embedded in, and the message you send is limited to 500 characters, so good luck pasting a log or configuration.

rschiavone 10/30/2025||

Feature so good you can't turn it off, so they can show in their internal metrics 100% adoption

DelightOne 10/30/2025|

They don't wanna be like Facebooks' .1%.Thy know your user.

JohnFen 10/30/2025||

It really does seem like Microsoft is intentionally making the lives of their users difficult, like they're trying to win some sort of malevolent contest.

ratelimitsteve 10/30/2025|

they're competing for investor money by trying to shout "AI" the loudest

MisterKent 10/30/2025||

Try going to OneDrive to see your stuff if you want to be really annoyed.

ch4s3 10/30/2025||

Directions unclear, stuck in sharepoint auth loop.

phito 10/31/2025|||

I dread every time I have to open OneDrive or SharePoint to find a file. How can they manage to make a file browsing app SO bad?! Same with teams.

profsummergig 10/30/2025||

I used to go to office.com to use web versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint.

Imagine my pleasant surprise (/s) when recently I went there, and the icons for these apps had vanished. Instead there was a giant gaping textbox for Copilot. A minute or so of staring at it, and I noticed a "Create" link on the left. That led to a page that invited me to do various things (e.g. "create a presentation", presumably with the web version of PowerPoint). The icons were still missing though.

Also notable: My work-issued Windows computer has Copilot, and Copilot 365. I have no idea which does what, and what's the difference between the two.

more_corn 10/30/2025||

We should start calling it “the hallucinator” Can you imagine how this is going to look when the first excel hallucinations start cropping up?

layer8 10/30/2025||

To put a more positive spin on it, they should call it “muse”. It generates musings.

Qem 10/31/2025|||

Co-spy-a-lot.

calvinmorrison 10/31/2025||

Who cares about excel I'm busy trying to start an AI cult worship and ride off into the sunset on a private jet

dgan 10/30/2025||

You also cant disable the stupid "Pin Copilote" in teams, even if the company doesnt actyally have copilote

Just regular agressivness from an agressive company

bgwalter 10/30/2025|

Inundate Microsoft Support with questions how to turn off Clippy Clanker until they stop. They did remove the original Clippy after a while.

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