Most failures trace to licence or permission
Before working through this triage list: confirm the user has the M365 Copilot paid add-on assigned. The majority of "Copilot isn't working" reports are licence gaps, not product failures.
What's new: June 2026
Copilot Cowork is now generally available and billed on usage via Copilot Credits at $0.01/credit pay-as-you-go, and the Work IQ APIs reached GA. If you build custom agents that ground in your M365 data via Work IQ, that usage is metered in Copilot Credits (off by default; admins set spend limits and alerts). See the licensing/comparison guide for the full cost picture.
Do not ask Copilot why it failed
Copilot has no visibility into the retrieval layer that feeds it. Asked the same question about its own document limits in three separate chats on 13 August 2026, it gave three different answers, and not one of them mentioned the processing budgets, the partial-processing behaviour or the access threshold documented below. All three did give a file-size number and cite a source for it, and the cited page is real: it is the file-upload help for the consumer Copilot, not the Microsoft 365 document path the question was about.
So the failure mode is not a made-up number. It is the right quote from the wrong product, presented as self-knowledge, which is harder to catch precisely because it survives a fact check. Diagnose from the symptom and the documented limits below, never from Copilot's account of itself.
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Copilot says it has no access to your data
"I don't have access to your emails" or Web mode active
- Free Copilot Chat (included with E3/E5): web only, no M365 data (except Outlook: inbox and calendar grounding available on free tier)
- Work/Web toggle set to Web mode
- M365 Copilot paid add-on not assigned
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Copilot can't find a specific file or email
@ picker shows nothing, or referenced item returns no content
- File is on local disk, not OneDrive or SharePoint
- You don't have read access to the file
- File is new and not indexed yet. Microsoft indexes new documents added to a SharePoint site that two or more people can reach daily. Documents you create are indexed in near real time in your own mailbox
- Email attachment: Copilot reads the message body only
- File found but content unreadable: see metadata only below
- Upload file to OneDrive first
- Request access directly in SharePoint
- Run Microsoft's own indexing check: take a unique phrase from inside the file and search for it in the SharePoint site. If the file does not appear, indexing is incomplete. One step, and it separates an indexing wait from every other cause on this row
- For a genuinely new file in a shared site, waiting is the fix and daily is the published figure. Microsoft has never published a crawl interval for SharePoint Online, so treat any specific number you are quoted as unsourced
- Context IQ guide →
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Copilot answers from the version before your edit
Confident answer with a citation, quoting content you already changed, and nothing says the version is old
- Your edit never reached the cloud. Copilot grounds on Microsoft Graph and the semantic index, which are built from SharePoint Online files. The copy on your disk is not in that pipeline, so a paused or pending sync leaves your change somewhere Copilot never looks
- It is almost certainly not indexing lag. Microsoft's word for an update to an already indexed document is immediately. Indexing time is the explanation for a new file, not for an edit
- Different surfaces read different things. Copilot working inside a document you have open is operating on content already in use by you; Copilot Chat answers from what Graph and the index hold
- For documents stored on OneDrive or SharePoint, Microsoft caches document summaries for performance, and publishes nothing about when that cache refreshes
- Open the cloud copy in a browser before you blame Copilot. If your change is not there, this is a sync problem and no amount of reprompting will fix it. Check the Modified timestamp while you are there
- Confirm the file shows as uploaded rather than pending, then ask again. If the answer corrects itself, the index was never the problem
- For anything that will be quoted onward, cite the version you checked, not the version Copilot implies. It cannot report which copy it read, and asking it will produce a plausible answer rather than a true one
- Context IQ guide →
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A meeting is missing from the @ picker or recap
Meeting doesn't appear as a referenceable item
- Transcript was not enabled during the meeting
- Transcript was started mid-meeting, so early content is missing
- Meeting transcript not yet processed (up to 24h)
- Enable transcript by default in Teams settings
- Start transcript within first 60 seconds of next meeting
- Teams Meetings guide →
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Copilot only found a few emails, missing most of the thread
Returned 2–3 emails when dozens exist
- Chat has a hard cap: ~10 email results per query
- Teams messages default to last 30 days of current thread
- General query: Copilot sampled broadly rather than exhaustively
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Answer is generic, could apply to any project
"Typically, projects face risks such as…" instead of your project
- No source referenced: Copilot searched broadly
- Prompt had no file or meeting context
- Copilot fell back to general knowledge
- Add @ reference to the specific file or meeting
- Add "based only on @filename" constraint
- Context IQ guide →
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Answer is too long, too detailed, or wrong format
Wall of text when you needed a table or 5 bullets
- No format constraint in the prompt
- No audience specified, so Copilot defaulted to comprehensive
- Multiple tasks in one prompt
- Add format: "as a table" / "under 150 words" / "5 bullets"
- Name the audience: "for the CFO" / "for a new joiner"
- Prompt Hygiene guide →
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Two people asked the same question and got different answers
Same prompt, different users, inconsistent results
- Different M365 permissions, so each person sees different content
- No explicit source referenced: Copilot searched each person's own data
- Prompt was vague, so Copilot chose different content to surface
- Reference a shared source everyone can access
- Deploy a Copilot Studio agent for consistent team-wide answers
- Agents guide →
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Copilot ignored a condition or instruction in the prompt
"Exclude closed items", and it included them anyway
- Constraint was buried at the end or mid-sentence
- Multiple instructions, so some were deprioritised
- Constraint was implied rather than explicit
- Move the constraint to a separate sentence
- Use "Do not include X", an explicit negative instruction
- Prompt Hygiene guide →
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A shared Page is showing old information
"The summary no longer matches the project status"
- Pages are snapshots, so they do not auto-update
- Copilot created the Page from content at a point in time
- Regenerate the Page from the updated source
- Use Loop for live-updating collaborative content instead
- Pages guide →
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Notebook is not using the documents I pinned
Answers seem to come from general knowledge, not the files
- Files were added but not yet indexed in the Notebook
- File type not supported (e.g. image-only PDF)
- Files are in a format Notebooks cannot read
- Wait a few minutes after adding references before querying
- Ensure files are .docx, .pdf (with text), .xlsx, or .pptx
- Notebooks guide →
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An agent is giving different answers than expected
Team members get inconsistent or out-of-scope responses
- Instruction block does not include explicit boundaries
- Prompt is too vague, so the agent guesses the intent
- Knowledge sources are outdated or not yet indexed
- Add explicit "Do not…" boundaries to the instruction block
- Use the conversation starters from the repo as prompt templates
- Agents guide →
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No Copilot button in Word, PowerPoint, or Excel
Ribbon doesn't show Copilot icon in Office apps
- M365 Copilot paid add-on not assigned to this user
- Office app version is out of date
- Admin has restricted Copilot to specific groups
- Check licence: Settings → Subscriptions → Copilot
- Update Office via File → Account → Update Options
- Office Apps guide →
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Schedule this prompt option is not appearing
Hovering over a prompt in chat history shows no scheduling option
- Scheduled prompts require M365 Copilot paid add-on
- Feature may not yet be rolled out to your tenant
- Hovering over the wrong area: hover the prompt result, not the input
- Run the prompt first, then hover the result in chat history
- Confirm licence includes scheduled prompts (GA Jan 2026)
- Scheduled Prompts guide →
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Copilot during a Teams meeting shows no content
Panel is blank or "Copilot is generating…" never resolves
- Transcript has not been started
- Meeting was just started, so the transcript needs a few minutes of content
- Org policy may restrict in-meeting Copilot
- Start transcript (More → Start transcription) then wait 2–3 min
- Ask your Teams admin if in-meeting Copilot is enabled in your policy
- Teams Meetings guide →
Copilot uses web data, not my M365?
Toggle set to Web, or free licence
→ Switch to Work
Generic answer from a vague question?
No file or meeting referenced
→ Add @reference
Meeting not in @ picker?
No transcript = no reference
→ Enable transcript
Output too long, wrong format?
No format constraint in prompt
→ Add format rule
Page shows stale content?
Pages are snapshots, not live
→ Regenerate it
Team gets inconsistent answers?
Everyone has different data access
→ Deploy an agent
No Copilot button in Word/Excel/PPT?
Licence not assigned or app outdated
→ Check Settings → Subscriptions
Copilot missed most emails?
Chat cap is ~10 results per query
→ Reference specific thread
After this guide
Every guide in this set is free, and stays free. What they do not cover is the rollout itself: the operating model, the 90-day plan with owners and decision gates, the governance checklist, and the ROI case for a finance team that has already said no once.
That is the M365 Copilot Deployment Kit. $97, one payment, no subscription.
See what is in the Deployment Kit →