You Can't Turn Off Copilot in the Web Versions of Word, Excel, or Powerpoint

Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago

artbristol

134 points

45 comments

support.microsoft.comTechstory

heatednegative

Debate

80/100

MicrosoftArtificial IntelligenceCopilotProductivity Software

Key topics

Microsoft

Artificial Intelligence

Copilot

Productivity Software

Microsoft's Copilot AI feature cannot be turned off in web versions of Office apps, sparking frustration among users who feel forced to use the feature and concerned about data collection and AI reliability.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Very active discussion

First comment

Peak period

0-6h

Avg / period

6.4

Comment distribution45 data points

Loading chart...

Based on 45 loaded comments

Key moments

01Story posted
Oct 30, 2025 at 1:10 PM EDT
2 months ago
Step 01
02First comment
Oct 30, 2025 at 2:39 PM EDT
1h after posting
Step 02
03Peak activity
26 comments in 0-6h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03
04Latest activity
Nov 1, 2025 at 5:25 PM EDT
2 months ago
Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (45 comments)

Showing 45 comments

MisterKent

2 months ago

2 replies

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

phito

2 months ago

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.

ch4s3

2 months ago

Directions unclear, stuck in sharepoint auth loop.

mainecoder

2 months ago

2 replies

please can we have a no AI button perhaps with regulation even when using AI if someone does not want it temporarily it can be toggled off but they need AI was used by X % of users and millions of times metrics for promo so NO

hagbard_c

2 months ago

1 reply

There is a crude version of such a button but it might no be what you want: the No Microsoft button. It behaves just like its siblings, the No Google, No Apple and all the other No ${undesirable_company} buttons. As long as you allow any of those companies access to your data they will be used for whatever purposes they consider beneficial to their competitiveness and/or bottom lines. Should this be found it it generally was a 'mistake' which will be 'rectified' and the dance continues. The only way to win this game is to refuse playing it, How a bout a nice game of chess?

NemoNobody

2 months ago

No Microsoft button

The world runs on Windows. Oftentimes, outdated iterations of windows even.

I think it's safe to say that it is impossible to exist in the world today without interacting with a Microsoft product as part of daily life - far more so than with Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, etc.

vee-kay

2 months ago

1 reply

AI LLMs are not profitable because they are not the product, we are the product (our data - our information, our privacy, our identity, our needs, our desires, our family photos/videos, etc.).

So no, the AI "feature" cannot be turned off, because it needs to be active and continuously spying on us and leeching our data to "train" them to spy better and more intrusively.

All so we get targeted ads everywhere that are more tightly coupled to our lives, and so our lives can be dictated, controlled and exploited by the powers that be.

johnisgood

2 months ago

This is why I have been saying that we should stop using these products, have an adblocker, and do not give them money for whatever that also includes "removing ads", because you are just incentivizing them to have ads.

rschiavone

2 months ago

1 reply

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

DelightOne

2 months ago

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

jandrese

2 months ago

4 replies

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.

Projectiboga

2 months ago

1 reply

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

2 months ago

This is primarily what I use copilot for!

DeepYogurt

2 months ago

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

UnserMannInK

2 months ago

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.

RandomBacon

2 months ago

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.

SilverElfin

2 months ago

3 replies

Anticompetitive bundling. We need new laws to protect fair competition.

bigyabai

2 months ago

> We need new laws to protect fair competition.

No we don't. We need to enforce the preexisting ones.

more_corn

2 months ago

We already have that

kulahan

2 months ago

Like including only Internet Explorer in your OS? :)

JohnFen

2 months ago

1 reply

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

2 months ago

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

more_corn

2 months ago

3 replies

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

2 months ago

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

calvinmorrison

2 months ago

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

Qem

2 months ago

Co-spy-a-lot.

antiloper

2 months ago

2 replies

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

2 months ago

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

2 months ago

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.

normalaccess

2 months ago

2 replies

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

2 months ago

3 replies

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.

benterix

2 months ago

2 replies

> "increase engagement"

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

rcxdude

2 months ago

1 reply

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

2 months ago

> 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

2 months ago

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

moritzwarhier

2 months ago

1 reply

> 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

2 months ago

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.

fingerlocks

2 months ago

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.

cyanydeez

2 months ago

At this moment in time, just sounds like cyber fascism

jrepinc

2 months ago

That's why I switched to LibreOffice, no "AI" crap and full local and respecting privacy. https://www.libreoffice.org/

dgan

2 months ago

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

profsummergig

2 months ago

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.

rtjahsgT

2 months ago

The detrimental influence of "Satya" (why do people like Bibi and Satya always have the cute names for sympathy?) continues. He is a horrible person:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/mic...

Maybe Stephen Miller should take look at deportation.

vee-kay

2 months ago

And we don't even need to wait till Copilot starts serving us popup ads.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2633816/giant-ai-ads-are-com...

bgwalter

2 months ago

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