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I want to turn off or hide the draft with copilot dingbat that follows my cursor around in MS Word.
I have seen a few articles on this website, and I know it's not possible but I'm going to ask anyway.
For reference this is what I'm referring to:
It's more I find the little thing following me around on my screen to be annoying and distracting, I've managed to hide or disable anything related to copilot on my system except this little dingbat.
When a new document is open you get a little message that says "Select the icon or press Alt + i to draft with copilot"
It would be nice if I could hide that as well, yes copilot is a *feature*, and I don't care about it.
I also want to hide the paste with copilot and just used the local paste options that were built into previous versions of word.
I suspect that there is a copilot dingbat that is stored somewhere on my system, possibly in a font, and as I have already made a few detrimental modifications to my operating system registry, I'm not wary of messing up my computer any more than it could be.
The only saving grace I have at the moment is there is an issue with my account, so any accidental triggering of the feature causes it to crap out. (So long as I don't accidentally press the 'fix account" button)
I know that if it was easy to turn off there would be a button for it, I know Microsoft probably wants us to use this feature because it means more data for them to collect, an I'm disappointed in the loss of user agency that's resulted from this rollout, and there's a spike in animosity towards AI in general.
Found it, and unchecking the box worked. From inside of Word, File-->Options-->Copilot.
To turn off or hide the Copilot icon in MS Word, follow these steps:
- Open MS Word and go to any document.
- Click on the Copilot icon (the small light bulb) that appears on your document.
- A pane will appear on the right side. At the bottom of the pane, you'll see a checkbox labeled "Show Copilot in document".
- Uncheck the box to hide the icon.
If you don't see the option to hide the Copilot icon, you might need to adjust your settings:
- Go to File > Options > Proofing.
- Under AutoCorrect Options, click on AutoCorrect Settings.
- In the new window, navigate to the Typing tab and look for any settings related to Copilot or suggestions.
If these steps don't work, you might need to revert to an earlier version of Office where Copilot isn't integrated. You can find instructions on how to do this here.
Thank you. Did not work for me, but glad some people get a fix.
Hi Shruti2929,
Do you have a screenshot of the copilot icon? I believe there was a fully shaded version and a flat shaded version, but I had hidden both of them on the ribbon and could not get them back.
From memory there didn't appear to be any drop-down menu, but I will confirm this.
I did manage to remove the dingbat via brute force, and modifying my copy of word.
The copilot dingbat icon is also present on the web version that I was testing with, so I suspect there should be a holistic approach to disabling the dingbat subscription wide...
I will reinstall a retail copy of Microsoft Word and give your instructions a test and report back.
It's kind of silly because even on the web version it takes up about 80% of the screen, why not just use copilot through Bing at that point? I don't understand how they managed to get this feature through quality assurance... 🤮Hi Shruti2929,
Thank you for your response which unfortunately does not address my issue of being prompted to use Copilot to paste text.
Stepping through your post:
I am using Microsoft® Word for Microsoft 365 MSO Version 2410 64-bit
The Co-pilot icon is not a small light bulb, it is a sort of double scroll
Clicking on it does not open a pane on the right-hand side, it opens a Draft with Copilot dialog, no option to "Show Copilot in document", so the remaining steps are moot
Going to File > Options > Proofing, there is no Autocorrect Settings under Autocorrect Options, only an AutoCorrect Options button. Clicking that opens a box called AutoCorrect with tabs to AutoCorrect, Math AutoCorrect, AutoFormat as You Type, AutoFormat and Actions. None of the tabs, especially AutoCorrect As You Type, have any reference to Copilot.
Proposing reverting to an earlier version of Word is not particularly helpful, but thank you for taking the time to try to help
I am with you there, I detest and loathe this nagging encouraging of using Co-pilot when I am pefectly happy with Word as it stands and I a perfectly capable of makin my own decision son how to paste something FFS! What kind of moron does Microsoft take me fo?
sb_geo_advisoryMicrosoft, like all other corporates cater to the lowest common denominator, so they think everyone is moronic. To add to this, if you go to the FILE menu, OPTIONS, COPILOT and the DISABLE COPILOT it should go away.
Thank you. Sadly, this does not work for me. After almost an hour on the phone with microsoft, I am told that they are working on a fix for Chromebooks. I think I have the final solution. I am going back to Wordperfect.
