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Forget what you've heard, Word still has a Thesaurus

Ignore the clickbait headlines and social media experts, Microsoft Word still has a Thesaurus feature.  A slightly related feature has gone but Synonyms is still alive and kicking.

Here’s Word’s Thesaurus or “Synonyms” still in Word 365 using Microsoft’s example word.

And here’s Synonyms in Word 2024, using a more appropriate example word for this misinformation  “nonsense”.

The enhanced spell checker also includes synonyms to help distinguish the offered spelling corrections.

Most major languages in Office include a Thesaurus.

So much for the ‘news’ that Word’s Thesaurus has disappeared, it obviously has not.

Smart Lookup has gone

What’s changed is Microsoft Word’s “Smart Lookup” feature, shown in the Office 2024 example as the ‘Search ‘nonsense’ menu item.

Smart Lookup has been around since Office 2016 and was really a web search for the word or phrase selected.  Not really a thesaurus but sometimes acted as one, depending on the result of the search.

From 1 January 2025, Smart Lookup is no more.

In Word 365 it’s disappeared from the menu in the latest software versions.

In perpetual license Office (2024, 2021, 2019) it might still appear, as you can see above.  But if you try to use it, the Search pane will eventually show a typical Microsoft useless error message.

“Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again”.

Why has Smart Lookup disappeared?

In short, Copilot.   Smart Lookup is a rival to one small part of what Copilot AI can do.

Microsoft has dropped “Smart Lookup” as just another little push to using and paying for Copilot in Office.

Or to put it another way “Follow the money” … Microsoft’s money.

Zillion, Jillion and other big ‘numbers’ in Microsoft Word

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