Microsoft calls the feature text predictions. As you write, Word proposes the rest of your phrase in grey, and you press Tab or the right arrow key to take it. The switch is in File > Options > Advanced > Editing options > Show text predictions while typing, and Microsoft documents it on the Editor text predictions in Word page.

If you went looking for that checkbox and it wasn't there, you're in good company — that's the most common version of this question, and it usually isn't a bug.

Why the Checkbox Might Be Missing

Text predictions ship with Word for Microsoft 365 and Word for the web. A perpetual-licence Word — Word 2019, Word 2021, the copy that came with the machine — doesn't have the feature at all, and no setting will reveal it. Beyond the licence, four things gate it:

Signed in, on an active subscription

The prediction is computed by a Microsoft service, so Word needs an account that entitles you to it. Signed out, the feature goes quiet.

A supported editing language

Coverage started with English and has widened since, but it has never matched the language list of Word itself. Writing in an unsupported language means no suggestions, with no explanation given.

Connected experiences enabled

It belongs to the cloud-backed Office features. If your admin has switched connected experiences off — common in regulated industries — the option disappears for everyone in the tenant.

A recent enough build

Update channels roll features out at different speeds, and enterprise channels lag the consumer one by months. Two colleagues on "the same Word" can genuinely differ.

Outlook has its own text predictions, controlled separately in Outlook's own options. Turning the feature on in Word does nothing for your mail, and vice versa — they're two independent settings for what looks like one feature.

What It's Actually Good At

Where it works, it works well. The suggestions are phrase-level rather than single-word, they're tuned for the register people write documents in, and accepting with Tab keeps your hands where they were. For long-form drafting — reports, proposals, documentation — it removes a real amount of mechanical typing without changing anything you wrote.

It also stays out of the way, which matters more than it sounds. A suggestion you ignore costs nothing; you keep typing and it vanishes. That's the same interaction model code editors settled on, and it's the reason inline prediction is tolerable where a popup would not be. Ghost text covers why that particular UI won.

Where It Stops

At the edge of Office. That's the whole limitation, and it's a bigger one than it first appears, because Word is not where most people do most of their typing.

Think through an ordinary working day: a few Slack messages, a browser full of web apps, a ticket comment, a couple of chat replies, a CRM note, a form field, an email in a client that isn't Outlook. Word's text predictions reach none of it. The muscle memory you built pressing Tab in a document simply produces a tab character everywhere else, which is a particular kind of irritating — the feature taught you a habit it can't support.

This is exactly the complaint under the recurring "is there predictive text for Word / for everything else?" threads: people who found the feature, liked it, and then discovered its border. Writers using Scrivener or a plain editor never get it at all.

Worth knowing before you rely on it: because predictions come from a Microsoft service rather than your PC, the text being predicted is processed off-device under the connected-experiences terms. For most documents that's unremarkable. For client-confidential drafts or anything under a strict data policy, it's the reason your admin may have switched it off in the first place.

The Same Idea, Without the Border

Typeahead takes the interaction you already like in Word and applies it everywhere else. It runs as a system-tray utility and renders an inline grey suggestion at your caret in almost any Windows desktop app — WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Outlook, Thunderbird, Word, Notepad, Notepad++, and VS Code's chat and text panes, with code buffers off by default so it doesn't compete with a dedicated code completion tool. Press Tab or the right arrow to accept, keep typing to ignore.

The difference that matters here is where the prediction is computed. Suggestions come from a local LLM (Qwen 3.5 via llama.cpp) running entirely on your machine — no account, no text telemetry, nothing transmitted, and password fields and financial apps excluded automatically. It works on a plane, on a locked-down corporate network, and in a tenant where connected experiences are switched off. Before you've downloaded a model, custom snippets and dictionary-based autocomplete still work.

  Word text predictions Typeahead
Where it works Word and Word for the web Almost any Windows desktop app
Where prediction runs Microsoft's service On your PC
Needs a connection Yes No
Cost Included with Microsoft 365 $9.99 once
Accept key Tab or right arrow Tab or right arrow

They aren't rivals. If you have Microsoft 365, leave Word's predictions on — they're free and they're good inside Word. Typeahead is for the other twenty apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is the text predictions setting in Word?
File > Options > Advanced, then under Editing options tick "Show text predictions while typing." If the checkbox isn't listed, your Word edition doesn't offer the feature.
Why do I not have text predictions in Word?
Most often a perpetual licence rather than Microsoft 365, an editing language that isn't supported, connected experiences disabled by an administrator, or an update channel that hasn't received it yet.
Does Word's predictive text work offline?
No. Predictions are generated by a Microsoft cloud service, so they stop when the connection does. Typeahead runs its model locally and keeps working offline.
Can I get the same thing in Slack, Chrome or Notepad?
Not from Microsoft — text predictions are an Office feature and don't extend beyond it. A system-wide tool like Typeahead is the way to get inline suggestions you accept with Tab or the right arrow in apps outside Office.
Is this the same as autocorrect or Editor?
No. AutoCorrect fixes a word you already typed and Editor flags spelling and grammar after the fact. Text predictions look forward and propose text you haven't typed yet. Autocomplete vs. autocorrect vs. text expansion separates all three.

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