If your team has grown used to Word and Outlook finishing their sentences, that habit is about to change. Microsoft is rolling out an update that turns text predictions off by default in both apps, so the suggested words and phrases will no longer appear automatically as staff type.
The feature is not being removed. Anyone who wants it can switch it back on manually in supported versions of the apps. It simply will not be there unless someone asks for it.
Why this matters for your business
On its own this is a small change. The reason it is worth five minutes of your time is that it will land on staff desktops without warning, and small changes that arrive unannounced are the ones that generate help desk calls and quiet frustration.
- Tell people before they notice. A one-line message to the team saves someone assuming their computer is broken or that an update has gone wrong.
- Let people choose. Some staff type faster with predictions on, others find them distracting. The setting sits with the individual user, so the right answer is whatever each person prefers rather than a blanket rule.
There is a broader lesson here too. Microsoft 365 changes continuously, and features can appear, move or switch off between one month and the next. If nobody in your business is tracking those changes, you find out about them from whichever staff member complains first. A short monthly look at what has changed across your key apps is usually enough to stay ahead of it.
One word of caution worth repeating: a genuine change like this is exactly the kind of thing scammers imitate. If an email turns up telling your staff to click a link to restore a missing Microsoft feature, treat it as suspicious. Real settings changes are made inside the app itself, not through a link in an email.
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