How to lock down your privacy settings: Microsoft Office

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Easy · 3 steps · about 2 to 4 minutes

No link for this one. Office is software on your machine, so the settings are inside Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Change them in one and they apply to the rest.

Copilot is a separate switch elsewhere: its own guide.

How to find your Microsoft Office privacy settings manually

1. Open File, then Account

Account is near the bottom of the left rail, under Export and Close.

Step 1: the File menu in Word, with Account near the foot of the left hand rail

2. Press Manage Settings under Account Privacy

Under your name and email, above the Office Background and Theme dropdowns.

Step 2: the Account page, with Manage Settings under the Account Privacy heading

3. Work down the privacy dialog

Step 3: the Connected experiences dialog, with every box cleared

That is how I set mine, with everything off. What each covers:

Experiences that analyze your content. Microsoft's wording is that they use your content to help you create and communicate. In practice the document goes to a cloud service. This powers design ideas, smart suggestions and translation.
Experiences that download online content. Templates, stock images, reference material.
All connected experiences. The master switch. Office warns that turning it off also stops your privacy choices applying across devices, so with Office on more than one machine you may prefer clearing the two specific boxes.
Personalized offers and discounts. Advertising. Microsoft says it does not read file contents for this, only which apps and features you use.
Diagnostic data, further down the dialog, controls how much telemetry the app sends.

Each section notes that some experiences will not be available if you turn it off.

Not covered

Files in OneDrive or SharePoint, which are governed by your Microsoft account terms rather than by a checkbox in Word.