My Word. Microsoft's prepping Similarity Checker for retirement

Built-in plagiarism police to hand in badge next month

Microsoft is retiring Word's Similarity Checker on October 3 and stripping the feature from Microsoft Editor.

Other writing and editing tools, including Microsoft 365 Copilot, won't be affected. But if an organization uses Similarity Checker as part of its workflow, it's time to consider alternatives.

Similarity Checker has been around for a few years. Launched in 2020, the Bing Search-powered service compared text from the user to online sources and came up with a percentage score – how much of the text was similar to those online sources.

The user could then add citations if appropriate, or try again for originality. Microsoft had previously said: "This can aid writers in focusing less on the mechanics of writing, and more on the content."

Word's citation capabilities will not be affected by the retirement, nor will its spelling and grammar checking...

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