Microsoft just killed the ability to look up words and phrases in Word

Since 2016, Microsoft Word users have had access to Smart Lookup, a nifty feature that lets you right-click on a word or phrase and bring up definitions, synonyms, and relevant links to sites like Wikipedia.

Now, however, Windows Latest reports that Microsoft has decided to retire the Smart Lookup feature. If you check out the Smart Lookup support page, Microsoft has added a notice at the top:

“Important: Smart Lookup will be retired starting on January 1, 2025.”

As of this writing, if you right-click on a word or phrase and select Search “[word/phrase]” in the context menu, it’ll open up the Search pane like usual, but you won’t get any search results. It’ll get stuck loading before eventually saying: “Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.”

Smart Lookup was long powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and it actually worked quite well. So why remove it? The only reasonable answer is that Microsoft wants to push users toward Copilot. If you want to look up stuff — not just definitions and synonyms but anything else — then you’ll have to start relying on Copilot.

Not only has Smart Lookup been removed from Microsoft Word, but it’s also been removed from the standalone Office 2024 suite… an unusual move because Copilot can’t be used there at all.