Microsoft 365 Family and Personal users have a chance to beat the price rise widely expected to come in 2025. You can lock in the current price for up to five years. Why the expected price increase for Microsoft 365? Microsoft has already raised the price of Microsoft 365 in
The dedicated Copilot key, announced at the start of 2024 is being partly phased out by the end of the same year! The Copilot key is on some new computers and is supposed to start the Copilot Windows app directly. At least that was the idea in January 2024 when
The idea that Microsoft is using Word, Excel or other documents to train their Copilot AI system won’t die. Let’s debunk one too often repeated myth about Office “Connected Experiences” which is not proof of a Microsoft conspiracy to steal customers work. We’ve gone into detail about what isn’t or
Social media is full of allegations that Microsoft is spying on customers Word and Excel documents to train their Copilot AI system. Here’s the facts and the ‘gotchas’ that Microsoft leaves unanswered. In this article we’ll go into the possibility of Microsoft ‘spying’ on customers. We’ll start with a summary
Microsoft provides almost useless instructions on how to stop your data being used for Copilot AI model training. Here’s how it really works. Like all AI companies, Microsoft uses the interactions with their Copilot system to help improve its responses. That’s called “model training”. Some people, understandably, don’t want their
The Copilot shortcut key in Word is unusual, so much that even Microsoft gets confused. We’ll look at the peculiarities in what seems like a simple keyboard shortcut. Office Watch reader, Fred J. from Wilmington let us know about this Microsoft social media post “Click ALT + I and ask
Social media is spreading a false ‘tip’ that’s supposed to stop Microsoft spying on your work in Word and Excel. The suggestion might not work at all and worse, it’ll stop important Office features from working at all. And Microsoft is NOT spying on Word, Excel or PowerPoint for their
Microsoft has unveiled several significant updates to its Microsoft 365 and other commercial products. A monthly payment option for Copilot addons and an increase in prices for monthly billing of many other plans. The usual Microsoft phrases are being thrown around. Lot’s of talk about “standardization” plus “consistency and transparency”.
Some Microsoft 365 customers have started seeing Copilot appearing in their Microsoft 365 / Office apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Why is Copilot there when you haven’t paid for it? Microsoft is rolling out new Microsoft 365 Family and Personal plans which include a limited Copilot component. We’re calling
The Copilot icon in Word 365 is annoying clutter in the left-margin of Word documents. Customers expect a way to remove it and there’s a lot of misinformation that wastes time. First the bad news … There’s no way, at the moment, to disable or hide the left-side Copilot icon
Google has improved their Gemini AI system for better images with their Imagen3. Here’s how it works and how it’s changed from earlier Google AI systems. Use these AI images for Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents. All these images are made with the free version of Google Gemini. There’s a
Office Insiders will get a nasty Copilot shock when they start a new document in Word 365. Microsoft has gone ‘over the top’ in their latest effort to push Copilot. The latest Insiders release of Word 365 with a paid Copilot plan has this when a new blank document is
Word is getting an online coach to improve or adapt your writing with the Copilot Coaching. It’s an extension of the current rewrite option in Copilot. Coaching analyses the selected text or entire document then makes suggestions that you can accept or reject. There are quite a few conditions on
Add something special to the start of your Word document with a banner image with text. We’ll explain how to do that with free tools like Copilot or Designer. We were inspired by a Microsoft promotion which wrongly said that a Microsoft 365 subscription with Copilot Pro is required, when
All you need is a ‘strawberry’ to see both ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot gets simple things wrong. Or ask which is larger of two numbers. Modern AI systems aren’t as great as the hype and why you definitely need to check anything Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini or Meta etc tells
A new collection of Copilot features have been released under the banner “Wave 2” with inclusions for Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Word and Teams. Don’t get too excited because there’s ‘fine print’ that limits who can catch this wave. Before we explain a little of what’s in the new set of
Paid Copilot plans have some innovations in the Word 365 interface with a better way to Make Changes to text plus more paste options too. These changes are in Word 365 public releases linked to a paid Copilot plan. We found them in v2407 build 17830.20138 with Copilot Pro. Auto
Paying Copilot Pro customers have lost a major part of what they pay for. Say goodbye to Copilot GPT Builder in early July 2024. It’s only been a few months since Microsoft launched their paid AI plans including Copilot Pro and they are already removing a major component. Copilot GPT
Microsoft Designer’s Image Creator can now make landscape (wide) images as well as square and portrait orientations. Unlike Copilot which gives no orientation choice. Go to Image Creator and click on Size to see three options. Square (1024 x 1024) Portrait (1024 x 1792) Wide (1792 x 1024) Designers ‘Wide’
Microsoft Office has a Remove Background tool for images but there are two better, faster and free ways to do the same job. Background removal lets you get an image with a transparent surround which can be merged/overlaid into any other slide or document more seamlessly (left) than a separate
You don’t need to pay for Microsoft’s AI service, Copilot, to get some of its benefits in Microsoft Office, especially Word, Outlook and Excel. Try converting text to a table or vice versa. The trick to grabbing text from an image. Along the way you’ll also discover some of the
Outlook (classic) for Windows is getting Copilot AI features but only some people will get the summarizing, draft, rewrite and coaching benefits. You might have seen the news that the current Outlook 365 for Windows is getting Copilot but few mentioned the crucial detail that Microsoft put in the fine
One part of Microsoft’s AI push should scare the hell out of anyone interested in their privacy but Microsoft is ignoring that with their upcoming Recall feature. Recall is one of the upcoming AI features in Windows 11. It’s supposed to help people search through their past actions by snooping
With a simple trick, you can use Copilot to summarize and query Word documents without paying for an expensive Copilot plan. In theory you need an expensive Copilot plan to sum up or ask questions about Word document with Microsoft’s AI system. The Copilot side-pane is only available in Copilot
