How to Turn Off Copilot in Excel: Every Level, From the Ribbon Button to Admin Policy
A little icon follows your cursor around the grid. A suggestion card appears the moment you type =. Something offers to summarise a table you have been staring at for eleven years. If you want to turn off Copilot in Excel, the frustrating part is that "Copilot" is not one thing — it is a ribbon button, a floating icon, a formula suggester, a set of connected services and, on Windows, a separate app with the same name. Switching off one of them leaves the others running.
This guide goes level by level, from the purely cosmetic to the genuinely permanent, and says plainly what each one does and does not stop. Menu paths are quoted as Microsoft spells them, which means American spellings in the option names, and Microsoft moves these settings between builds — if a path below does not match your screen, the vendor's own turn off Copilot page is the authority.
Pick your level first
Most people who arrive here want level 3. Know what the other levels do before you go further than you meant to — level 5 in particular takes several unrelated features down with it.
| Level | What it stops | What it leaves running | Who can do it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Remove the ribbon button | The visible button only | Everything — it is cosmetic | You |
| 2. Quiet the floating icon | The icon hovering over cells | The ribbon button, the pane, formula suggestions | You, if your build offers it |
| 3. Clear Enable Copilot | Copilot in that app on that device | Copilot in Word, Outlook, Windows, Edge | You, on a personal account |
| 4. Turn off formula suggestions | The = suggestion cards | The Copilot pane | You |
| 5. Turn off connected experiences | Copilot, plus many other online features | Offline Excel | You |
| 6. Uninstall the Windows Copilot app | The separate desktop app and its key | Copilot inside Office apps | You, as a local admin |
| 7. Licence or policy change | Copilot across the organisation | Nothing Copilot-related | Your Microsoft 365 admin |
Level 1: remove the Copilot button from the ribbon
Right-click anywhere on the ribbon and choose Customize the Ribbon. Under Main Tabs, expand Home, select the Assistance group — which is where the Copilot button lives in current builds — and click Remove, then OK.
Two honest caveats. You cannot remove the Copilot button on its own: the whole Assistance group goes, and anything else Microsoft has put in it goes with it, though most of those commands exist elsewhere on the ribbon or in the File menu. And this changes nothing about whether Copilot is running — it is a tidier ribbon, not an off switch. If the button is the only thing bothering you, stop here; if you want the feature gone, keep reading.
Level 2: stop the floating Copilot icon following your cursor
The small icon that appears beside the selected cell — Microsoft's in-grid entry point to the pane — is the single most complained-about part of Copilot in Excel, because it moves as you move. In builds that offer it, the setting is File > Options > Copilot, where a checkbox along the lines of Show Copilot icon only for highly relevant suggestions keeps the icon out of sight unless Copilot thinks it has something to offer.
Reports of that option's availability differ by SKU and build — it has been seen on consumer Microsoft 365 plans and missing on Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise. Check the exact wording on your own Options > Copilot page rather than trusting a screenshot from a blog, this one included. If the option is not there, level 3 removes the icon too, because it removes the feature behind it.
Level 3: turn off Copilot in Excel with the Enable Copilot checkbox
This is the real answer for most people, and it is three clicks.
- In Excel, go to File > Options > Copilot.
- Clear the Enable Copilot checkbox.
- Select OK, then close and restart Excel.
Microsoft describes the result as the Copilot icon on the ribbon being disabled, with no Copilot capabilities usable in that app. On a Mac the path is the app menu, then Preferences > Authoring and Proofing Tools > Copilot.
Three things to know before you consider the job done:
- It is per app and per device. There is a separate checkbox in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote, and clearing it on your desktop does nothing to your laptop. Outlook is different again — it uses a toggle in its own settings rather than a checkbox in Options.
- Your build has to be new enough. Microsoft's page lists the setting from Excel for Windows version 2501 and Excel for Mac 16.93.2, with similar floors for the other apps. If there is no Copilot entry in the Options list, update Excel and look again before trying anything more drastic.
- Microsoft scopes that article to personal Microsoft accounts. On a work or school account the checkbox may still appear, but the decisive control is your organisation's — see level 7.
Level 4: turn off formula suggestions separately
Copilot's formula help is its own pair of settings, and people happy to keep the pane often still want these gone. There are two: formula completion, which proposes a whole formula the instant you type = in a cell, and formula by example, which watches you type a few values by hand and offers one formula to fill the rest of the column.
Both live in the same place — File > Options > Copilot on Windows; in Excel for the web, File > Options (…) > Copilot Settings — and you clear the checkbox for whichever you do not want. You can also dismiss formula completion from the suggestion card itself, via More options (…) on the card. Microsoft's note is that the suggestions stay off until you return to the dialog and tick the boxes again, so it is persistent rather than per-session.
This level is worth doing even if you keep everything else. A card that appears at the exact moment you start typing a formula is an interruption in the one part of Excel where you were already concentrating.
Level 5: connected experiences — powerful, and it takes hostages
If the Enable Copilot checkbox genuinely is not available to you, the documented fallback is to switch off the connected service class that Copilot depends on:
- File > Account > Account Privacy > Manage Settings.
- Under Connected experiences, clear Turn on experiences that analyze your content.
- Select OK, then close and restart Excel.
Microsoft's own warning is the important part: changing your account privacy settings to turn off Copilot also turns off other features you might want to use. That category is not Copilot-specific. Microsoft's named examples include PowerPoint Designer, Dictate, Translator and the Editor proofing features; in Excel, the analysis and dictation features that reach a service to work are in the same class. The adjacent toggle, experiences that download online content, covers templates, images, help articles and videos, so clearing that one too leaves the template gallery and in-app help empty.
Use this level when you have no other option, or when you want the whole class of online content analysis off as deliberate policy. Do not use it as a shortcut for hiding an icon — level 3 is narrower and reversible in one click.
What about disabling the Copilot COM add-in?
A lot of advice online tells you to open File > Options > Add-ins, set Manage to COM Add-ins, click Go, and untick Copilot. Open the dialog by all means, but set your expectations: in current Microsoft 365 builds Copilot is compiled into Excel rather than loaded as a separate COM add-in, so on most machines there is nothing there to untick. Advice that assumes otherwise is usually carried over from an earlier preview or a different product.
The dialog is still worth a look. Organisations sometimes deploy Copilot-adjacent or third-party AI tooling as a real add-in, which will be listed and can be unticked, and the same screen holds the Disabled Items list. If you find a Copilot entry, untick it; if you do not, that is expected, and level 3 is your route.
Level 6: remove the Copilot app from Windows
The Copilot app on the Windows taskbar is a separate program from Copilot in Excel. Turning one off does nothing to the other, which is why people switch Copilot off in Excel and still see it every time they glance at the taskbar.
- Uninstall it. Settings > Apps > Installed apps, search for Copilot, open the three-dot menu and choose Uninstall. That removes the app and its entry points.
- Clear the taskbar. If an icon lingers after uninstalling, right-click it and choose Unpin from taskbar, or turn it off in Settings > Personalization > Taskbar.
- Reclaim the Copilot key. Newer keyboards have a dedicated key. Open Settings and search for Copilot key — the page has moved between Windows builds, appearing under both Personalization > Text input and Bluetooth & devices > Keyboard — then point the key at something else, or at nothing.
- Edge is separate again. Microsoft Edge carries its own Copilot entry points, configured in Edge's settings.
Be realistic about the ceiling: uninstalling the app removes the app. Microsoft keeps adding Copilot entry points across Windows, and some reappear after a feature update. On a work-managed device the uninstall may be blocked or silently reversed by IT policy.
Level 7: turning it off for a whole organisation
If you are an administrator, do not ask 200 people to clear a checkbox. The per-app Enable Copilot setting is a user preference stored on the device; it is not something you can reliably enforce or audit centrally. The routes that actually hold are:
- Licensing. In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, remove or unassign the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence from the user or group. This is the most direct control, and the only one that also stops the charge.
- Integrated apps. Under Settings > Integrated apps, block Copilot tenant-wide or scope the block to specific users and groups.
- Cloud Policy. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Apps admin centre at
config.office.com, then Customization > Policy Management, to apply policy settings to the Office apps by group. Allow up to 24 hours for changes to take effect, and test on one pilot group before you roll anything out broadly.
Group Policy and registry recipes circulate for this too. Some work, some are stale, and the key names differ between the on-premises and cloud policy paths — verify any of them against current Microsoft documentation and a test machine before deploying, rather than against a forum post.
Personal account versus work account: what you can actually control
This is where most of the frustration comes from, so it is worth stating flatly.
On a personal Microsoft account, every level from 1 to 6 is yours. You can switch Copilot off in each app, quiet the suggestions, disable connected experiences and uninstall the Windows app. What you cannot do is make Microsoft stop shipping it: an update can reintroduce an entry point, and you may have to revisit Options after a major version change.
On a work or school account, you control what your administrator leaves you. The checkbox may be present and may work; it may be greyed out; or the Copilot page may not appear in Options at all. Nothing you do locally overrides tenant policy, and nothing you do locally changes what your employer is paying for. If Copilot needs to be off for compliance reasons rather than preference ones, that is a request to IT with a written reason, not a setting you can fix from your desk.
What turning Copilot off does not do
- It does not stop the billing. A disabled Copilot on a licensed seat is a licensed seat. Only a licence change ends the charge.
- It does not travel. Per app, per device, per platform. Excel on the web and Excel on iPad have their own settings.
- It does not remove AI from your organisation. Copilot Chat, agents built in Copilot Studio and Copilot in other Microsoft products are governed separately.
- It is not permanent by itself. Feature updates change defaults and add entry points. If it matters, check Options again after a major update.
If you still need the work done — the routes that involve no AI at all
Plenty of people turn Copilot off and want nothing like it back. The jobs it was nudging you towards still exist, and Excel has had deterministic answers to most of them for years — answers that produce the same result every time, which is the property Copilot cannot offer and Microsoft itself cautions about.
- Repeating an import or a clean-up every month: Power Query. You record the transformation once, and Refresh All reproduces it exactly, with every step visible and editable.
- Repeating a sequence of actions: a macro. What a macro actually is covers the recorder, which writes the code for you and never invents a step you did not perform.
- Formulas and lookups:
SUMIFS,XLOOKUP,IFERRORand a properly structured table cover the great majority of finance work. Excel skills for accountants sets out the working set.
None of that needs a subscription, a connected service, or a review of what the model guessed.
A note on why people switch it off
Two quite different groups end up on a page like this. The first does not want AI anywhere near their work — the suggestions are noise, the data handling is a question they would rather not open, and that is a complete and reasonable position. Everything above is written for you, and the guide ends here.
The second group tried Copilot properly and switched it off because it could not do the thing they needed — no connection to the accounting ledger, rate limits on the worksheet function, workbooks blocked by sensitivity labels, results that change between runs. If that is nearer the mark, the specific boundaries are catalogued in what Copilot in Excel cannot do for accountants, and AI in Excel for accountants sets out where the technology earns its keep and where it does not. That is a different question from this one, and you are welcome to ignore it.
Frequently asked questions
How do I turn off Copilot in Excel permanently?
In Excel on Windows, go to File > Options > Copilot, clear the Enable Copilot checkbox, select OK, then close and restart Excel. Microsoft's wording is that the Copilot icon on the ribbon is disabled and you will not be able to use any Copilot capabilities in that app. The setting is per app and per device, so repeat it in Word, PowerPoint and on every machine you use. On a managed work device an administrator policy can still override your choice.
Why is there no Copilot option in my Excel Options?
Usually one of two reasons. Your build may predate the setting — Microsoft's page lists it from Excel for Windows version 2501 and Excel for Mac 16.93.2 — so update Excel and look again. Or you are signed in with a work or school account on a tenant where the control sits with your administrator rather than with you; Microsoft scopes its turn-off article to personal Microsoft accounts. If neither applies, the fallback is File > Account > Account Privacy > Manage Settings, where clearing "Turn on experiences that analyze your content" also switches Copilot off — at the cost of several other features.
Does turning off Copilot in Excel also turn it off in Word and Outlook?
No. The Enable Copilot checkbox is separate in each app and applies to that app on that device only, so repeat it in Word, PowerPoint and OneNote. Outlook uses a toggle rather than a checkbox, reached through its own Settings or Quick Settings depending on the version. The Copilot app on Windows and Copilot in Microsoft Edge are separate products again, and are removed separately.
Will turning off Copilot stop the Copilot charge on my bill?
No. Switching Copilot off inside Excel is a behaviour setting, not a licensing action, and the subscription keeps billing. To stop paying, an administrator has to remove or reassign the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence in the admin centre, or a consumer has to change their own plan. Check the invoice and the plan on Microsoft's current billing pages rather than assuming, because plan names and what they include keep changing.
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