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How to get rid of Use Office connected experiences

Celeste Dias 20 Reputation points
2025-12-31T13:55:48.04+00:00

I can't safe an excel file as PDF . it shows a pop up Use Office connected experiences and I have to cancel. It happens only with excell and not with word.

Note: I use the office for Mac.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Excel | For home | MacOS
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Diana Mariz 8,605 Reputation points Independent Advisor
2025-12-31T14:38:29.9733333+00:00

Hi Celeste,

The root cause is that Excel for Mac uses Microsoft’s connected cloud services when exporting to PDF, while Word still supports a fully local PDF export in more scenarios. When Office detects that “connected experiences” are required but are disabled or restricted (by privacy settings, device management, or network policy), Excel blocks the export and shows the “Use Office connected experiences” prompt instead of silently failingThe root cause is that Excel for Mac uses Microsoft’s connected cloud services when exporting to PDF, while Word still supports a fully local PDF export in more scenarios. When Office detects that “connected experiences” are required but are disabled or restricted (by privacy settings, device management, or network policy), Excel blocks the export and shows the “Use Office connected experiences” prompt instead of silently failingThe root cause is that Excel for Mac uses Microsoft’s connected cloud services when exporting to PDF, while Word still supports a fully local PDF export in more scenarios. When Office detects that “connected experiences” are required but are disabled or restricted (by privacy settings, device management, or network policy), Excel blocks the export and shows the “Use Office connected experiences” prompt instead of silently failing

On macOS, Excel’s Save as PDF feature relies on Microsoft-connected services for rendering and compliance, whereas Word often falls back to macOS-native PDF handling.

Here is how to resolve it.

First, verify that connected experiences are allowed in Excel itself (Excel and Word have separate privacy states on Mac).

Open Excel, then go to Excel > Preferences > Privacy. Make sure “Enable optional connected experiences” is turned on. If this option is disabled or grayed out, Excel cannot complete the PDF export.

Next, fully restart Excel after changing this setting. Excel does not reinitialize privacy services until it is relaunched.

If the pop-up persists even when connected experiences are enabled, the Excel privacy cache may be corrupted. In that case, sign out of Office in Excel, close all Office apps, restart the Mac, then sign back in and try again. This resets the Excel service entitlement state.

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  1. Bob Jones AKA CyberTaz MVP 435.7K Reputation points
    2025-12-31T16:35:55.92+00:00

    To disable only Copilot go to Word> Preferences or Excel> Preferences where you should see a Copilot tool in the Authoring & Proofing Tools section. (Availability of this varies based on type of License for the Office software.) If it's there, click it then clear the checkbox.

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  2. Celeste Dias 20 Reputation points
    2026-01-01T08:18:12.4833333+00:00

    I checked and Copilot is disable on both Word and Excel but the MICROSOFT COPILOT CHAT FILES still apear whenever I save a document in one drive.

    I want to get rid of this file .

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