Microsoft is killing this popular Word feature and replacing it with AI

By Judy Sanhz Published January 30, 2025

In a Microsoft Support blog post, the software giant announced the end of a helpful feature called Smart Lookup available in Word. It appears like an attempt to get users to use Microsoft’s Copilot AI. The feature has been around since 2016, and it gives users definitions, relevant links, and synonyms directly inside of Word. Now, it’s gone for good.

Nevertheless, if you right-click on a word and choose Search from the context menu, you will see only an empty search panel. Some users will see a message saying, “Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again,” while others will see a blank space that never stops loading. Microsoft even removed the Smart Lookup feature from the standalone Office 2024 suite.

I tried using the feature repeatedly to see if it worked, but nothing happened. Oddly, you still see the Search option when you right-click a word but can’t get the needed information. We’ll see if Microsoft removes the option in a future update, but currently, it does nothing.

However, this isn’t the first time Microsoft has retired a popular tool. For example, not too long ago, Microsoft axed Paint 3D. Therefore, it stopped receiving updates. We can’t forget WordPad dying after 29 years since this one hit hard for nostalgic users.

Although Microsoft hasn’t explicitly said that Copilot is replacing Smart Lookup, that certainly looks like the case. Microsoft has Copilot available directly inside of Word, and the AI chatbot is more than capable of providing definitions, links, and writing advice.  The company has also recently rolled out Copilot Actions, which offers AI agents in Microsoft apps like Teams and Outlook, though only for businesses at the moment.