Microsoft Office for Mac 16.96
Microsoft has released version 16.96 of Office for Mac, featuring updated features and bug fixes for Outlook, as well as security fixes for the other apps. The email, calendar, and contact app now nudges you to upload larger file attachments to OneDrive, increases the maximum duration for the Undo Send feature to 120 seconds, adds the option to disable Copilot from the Outlook settings, allows senders to prevent recipients from reacting to their emails, resolves an issue where VoiceOver does not read the text available in the Automatic replies edit field, fixes a bug where Filter by Categories is greyed out when using it from the menu bar, addresses a problem that prevented Handoff from working as expected, and fixes a bug where auto-capitalization failed when composing an email. ($149.99 for a one-time purchase, $99.99/$69.99 annual subscription options, free update through Microsoft AutoUpdate, release notes, macOS 12+)
It’s now bumped-up to $129.99/$99.99 a year; due to the addition of CoPilot AI. ;-)
EDIT: Non-CoPilot is also available at $99.99/$69.99 a year for current subscribers only “for a limited time”, and somewhat hidden in the options to get it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/microsoft/comments/1i4q5ej/reducedrate_microsoft_365_without_copilot
The latest update of Word for Mac (16.96) is behaving eratically. When editing word documents changes lad and don’t appear unless you click somewhere. When changing font sizes the changes do not take.
It’s possible to opt out of CoPilot. I just (last week) did it, and renewed my subscription for the old UK price of £59.99 (including VAT).
Thanks for the details about the pricing—perhaps @agen can look into it the next time Office updates.