Microsoft Word and the rest of Microsoft 365 now come with AI credits for Copilot, but there’s one thing they now lack. In news that will shock, astonish, and horrify many, Word no longer has a built-in thesaurus. Honestly, I’m flummoxed. I don’t know what I’ll do without the feature. At a minimum I’ve reached my limit for synonyms of shocked that I can think of off the top of my head.
The thesaurus was removed from Word when Microsoft retired Smart Lookup at the start of this year. That feature allowed you to look up the definition of a word or search for synonyms for a word by selecting text and right-clicking. Now, you’ll have to use a different tool, such as Copilot within Word. Alternatively, you can use your web browser to search for definitions and synonyms. None of the alternatives are as quick or smooth as Smart Lookup, but they’re functional.
Microsoft did not seem to make a big deal about the feature going away. A support document for Smart Lookup now states, “Important: Smart Lookup will be retired starting on January 1, 2025.”
Oddly, at first glance it looks like you can still use the feature within Word, but trying to do so shows a message that says the feature has been deprecated.
Copilot in Word
Microsoft’s support page for Smart Lookup does not mention a specific replacement, but I suspect Microsoft wants people to use Copilot now. The tech giant has aggressively added Copilot to Windows 11, Microsoft 365, and other Microsoft services.
Microsoft raised the price of Microsoft 365 for the first time in 12 years recently. The tech giant did not list the addition of Copilot credits to Microsoft 365 Personal Family subscriptions as the cause of the price increase, but it’s difficult to not connect the two. Microsoft added hundreds of features to Microsoft 365 over the last decade. The company even added entire apps to the subscription in that time. But no addition made Microsoft raise the price of Microsoft 365, that is, until Copilot came along.
The Microsoft 365 app also got a new logo recently. At first glance, the Microsoft 365 app icon looks like the Copilot logo, but it has “M365” over it. Well, unless you have a lower resolution screen in which case the icon has a janky mess of indiscernible characters.
It’s clear Microsoft’s higher ups want people to use Copilot. Smart Lookup being removed from Word could encourage people to migrate to Copilot.
