|
Microsoft Office Is Now Microsoft 365 Copilot
A Tutorial If You Wish To Fly with a Copilot, or How To Fly Solo
Disclaimer: Except for in doing research, no part of what follows
was generated or written by AI.
Several articles appeared in the IT press during the past week
discussing how Microsoft has changed the brand name of Microsoft 365 (formerly
Office 365) to Microsoft 365 Copilot. Many of these articles had
criticized Microsoft for rebranding what is its most popular application.
An example of this criticism can be found on the
Windows Latest website, January 18, 2025.
The Copilot AI became embedded in users' installations of the Office apps
with an Office update that was released on January 16, 2025. On that date, Microsoft
also announced the rebranding scheme and explained its reasons for doing so
with the post,
"Copilot is now included in Microsoft 365 Personal and Family."
MS proudly proclaimed that it has added "the
transformative power of AI to the personal productivity tools that
millions of people use every day. Note: these changes only apply to our
consumer subscription
plans." 
If you don't see any of these new features in your Office apps, then
most likely you haven't updated your Office installation.
t is also possible that "Connected
Experiences" are
turned off. Go to Table
2 in
this document to learn how to turn on or off "Connected
Experiences".
Follow these simple steps to manually update Office:
1. Open any Office app
2. Click File from the top menu
3. Click Account
4. Click the Update Options button
5. Click
Update Now from the drop down list
6. You will be prompted to close
the open Office app
A personal note: I have recently switch my
Office theme to dark mode.
That will help explain the visual
difference between Table 1 and Table 2.
Old eyes need new tricks.
Table 1
Once the January 16, 2025 Office Update is completed,
a new button will
appear on the Office application toolbar.
As you can see
from
the example below taken from Word 365,
the button with the Copilot logo
appears next to the more familiar Editor button. |
 |
When you start a New Document
in Word with Copilot now installed,
text will is displayed
telling you how to activate Copilot for help writing your New
Document.
You can click the Copilot logo or use the keyboard
shortcut of "Alt key + i" (lowercase letter i) |
 |
When Copilot loads, a prompt
appears with a text box where you type
in what you want to
write about, or how you
want Copilot to help you with your document. |
 |
Below is an example of a prompt typed
into the box shown above.
After you type the prompt, click
the cyan colored box
labeled "Generate" to put Copilot to
work on the prompt. |
 |
And Copilot responds to the
prompt.
In our example here, Copilot generated a succinct outline
with 4 headers and paragraphs
explaining Eisenhower's reasoning behind his
Military Industrial Complex statement. |
 |
The prompt tool changes once the prompted text is completed.
You can keep the generated text; regenerate the text; discard
the generated text; or enhance it.
The prompt box also now
displays a disclaimer that says
"AI generated content may be
incorrect."
In other words, this all might be a
pile of poop — or a "hallucination," as the AI mavens call it. |
 |
If, however, you really would rather not have the Copilot AI infringe
upon your Office experience, and possibly your privacy, too, then you
can turn off Copilot's access to your Office installation. What
follows is a reprise of a Dispatch posted November 28, 2024.
The
post is titled, "Taming
the AI Beast, Part 1: How to Manage Connected Experiences In Office 365."
To disable Copilot in your Office installation, follow the steps below.
Table 2
Back to
Table 1
| In Word, Excel, Outlook, or
PowerPoint.
The examples below are taken from Word. |
| In any office application, when the
app opens a menu on the left is displayed. Scroll down the
left pane menu, and click Account.
In
Outlook, the button on the left pane is labeled, Office
Account. That is the only difference in Outlook. Under the Account heading, click
Account Privacy. Then click the Manage
Settings button. |
 |
| When the Privacy Settings dialog box
opens, what you will first see is the settings for you to
choose if or how much diagnostic data concerning your Office
applications will be sent to Microsoft. As you can see from
below, some diagnostic data is required and cannot be disabled.
I really don't have an opinion about the Optional diagnostic
data, however. My choice is to not send to Microsoft
anymore data than is required. SCROLL DOWN using
to the scroll bar to get to the Connected
experiences settings. |
 |
There are three dialog boxes that will
allow you to toggle on or off different aspects of Connected
experiences in the various Office applications.
Simply check the highlighted box to turn a feature on or off.
The first dialog box is labeled "Experiences that
analyze your content." Here the AI will evaluate
what task you are performing and offer suggestions that the AI
considers will improve the results of whatever that task may be.
These include the following:
1. PowerPoint
Designer: Offers design suggestions to make your
presentations more visually appealing.
2. Translator:
Translates text within your documents into different languages.
3. Editor: Checks grammar, spelling, and
style in your documents and emails.
4. Analyze Data
in Excel: Provides data insights and visualizations
based on your spreadsheet data.
5. Live Captions &
Subtitles: Adds real-time captions or subtitles to your
PowerPoint presentations.
6. Dictate:
Allows you to dictate text instead of typing.
7.
Learning Tools: Offers tools like Read Aloud and
Immersive Reader to help with reading and comprehension.
In our Word example, turning off the "Experiences that analyze
your content" feature did not, however, disable the Editor.
The Editor function is local on the machine and does not require
Internet connectivity to work. I single the Editor out
because I actually do use the Editor quite frequently. On
May 23, 2023, I wrote a Dispatch that
focused on the Editor. If you use the F7 keyboard
shortcut to check spelling, the Editor will start
instead of simple spell check. |
 |
The second dialog box is labeled, "Experiences that
download online content." Some examples of the
type of content that could be downloaded into your document,
spreadsheet, or presentation are:
• Templates and Themes:
Pre-designed document layouts or spreadsheet formats to enhance
your files.
• Images and Icons: Visual elements that can be
added to your documents and presentations.
• Stock Photos and
Videos: High-quality media files for use in creating visually
appealing content.
• Data from Online Sources: This could
include updates to linked data, such as stock prices or weather
forecasts, in Excel.
Downloading of content from the
Internet is always a risking adventure. This is especially
true when that content is pushed to the user, as opposed to
users searching known sources for that data. Any source of
compromise, whether from a user's infected PC; an out of date
router; or a compromised source from the Internet could foster a
Man-In-the-Middle attack (MitM), for
instance.
A MitM attack could allow for an attacker to substitute
legitimate web content with an attacker's pernicious payload. |
 |
The third dialog box acts as a master control for the first two
boxes. Use this box to toggle on or off all Connected
experiences. To enable Connected experiences check, you
must first check Turn on all Connected experiences. Then
toggle the two more specific boxes on of off. If you check
off all Connected experiences, then the other two check boxes
will be dimmed and disabled.
I don't have an opinion
about Microsoft spam. |
After performing these steps, when you click the Copilot bottom
or type the keyboard shortcut,
you will be reminded that
access to Copilot has been disabled for your installation of
Office.
Er, I mean Copilot 365. |
 |
So, after reading this, hopefully you are prepared for the further
inclusion of
machine learning into ever more of your everyday
experiences. Hopefully, this post will provide with the knowledge
and confidence that comes with understanding how to put these new tools
to work for you. And may even make you a bit more productive, if
not a bit smarter.
Or you can keep control of your own work using Office, and maybe eve
your own soul. I report. You decide.
“It’s not artificial intelligence I’m
worried about, it’s human stupidity.”
— Neil Jacobstein
|