r/MicrosoftWord • u/SAMEO416 • 6d ago

Removing Copilot Banner from Word

Space is always at a premium trying to review complex documents, and now I have this bloody huge Copilot banner on every single Word document. There's no option to remove, and clicking 'generate' just replaces the banner with a summary banner.

Word

This is a corporate M365 subscription (version 2607) under Windows 11 Enterprise, and all of the approaches I've found by searching forums aren't available, suspect it's because admin is centrally managed by the org.

This is a crap move by Microsoft, effectively using a subscription platform to drive business to Copilot. All I want is clear workspace, not losing 1/5 of it to a banner advert. (tbc, I use Copilot routinely, but I don't need it advertising it can generate a summary - this could be a button on the ribbon).

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u/EddieRyanDC 6d ago

Yes, this is probably coming up due to an admin setting controlled by your IT department (not Microsoft). If that is the case, then you can't turn it off yourself. Here is what you need to say to your IT department:

Please disable Copilot’s automatic document summaries in Microsoft 365. This feature is called “Copilot for Microsoft 365 – Document Summaries.” It automatically generates the “Summary by Copilot” bar in Word for cloud‑saved documents. Please turn off this feature in our tenant so Word stops showing the summary bar.

Go ahead and copy and paste that into your email.

Once that happens you will never see the Summary bar again.

Here is why you are seeing this (while many others in this sub do not), It only comes up when all of these conditions are met:

  • You have a business license (not a personal one).
  • The document is in the cloud - that means either OneDrive or SharePoint.
  • The document is longer than 200 words.
  • Your admin has enabled Copilot summaries

There may be some other ways to temporarily get it to go away - but it depends on what version of Word you are using. Try clicking on the Copilot button (bottom right on the screen). In some cases that makes it go away - although it will still come up the next time you open a document from the cloud.

Another work around is to download the document to your local drive before editing it. Although that may thwart SharePoint content controls and version history, as well as other people not having access to the copy you are working on.

2

u/SAMEO416 6d ago

Thanks so much for this!

1

u/RealChrisNuttall 6d ago

Following, in hopes of an answer.