Microsoft ends the SharePoint search lock that hid files from Copilot
Reviewed by Helen Jones
Microsoft is retiring Restricted SharePoint Search, the tenant-wide allow list that limited Copilot Chat and related agents to at most 100 SharePoint sites. New enablement is blocked from 31 July 2026. Full retirement is 31 January 2027, with no extensions. Microsoft tells admins to use Restricted Content Discovery instead. That is a site-level switch that keeps a site out of organisation-wide search and Copilot answers, and removes Copilot entry points on that site. Existing RSS settings do not carry over. Once RSS is gone, Copilot and organisation-wide search follow ordinary permissions unless a site is excluded with Restricted Content Discovery. Sites that were only hidden by the old allow list can surface for anyone who already has access.
Until now, many tenants treated RSS as a blunt Copilot safety net. If a site was not on the 100-site list, Copilot often could not ground on it, even when people already had permission. That hid oversharing, but it also starved Copilot of useful files and made answers look thin or generic. After retirement, that hide-the-mess trick ends. Copilot can see more of the SharePoint you already have rights to, which can improve recaps and drafts when the right files are in play. It can also pull from dusty team sites, old project libraries, and overshared folders that RSS had kept out of view. Restricted Content Discovery can park a site, but Microsoft frames it as a pause while permissions are cleaned up, not a new permanent allow list.
Analysis
Treat this as a change to act on, not a new Copilot skill to practise. Ask your admin or IT champion, in writing, whether RSS is still on, which sites will be excluded with Restricted Content Discovery, and which overshared libraries should stay out of Copilot grounding before January 2027. Until you have that list, do not treat richer Copilot answers as proof that the source files were meant to be used.
Source note
Pulse published by Collab365 Spaces, reviewed by Helen Jones on . Cite as "Microsoft ends the SharePoint search lock that hid files from Copilot", Collab365 Spaces. 3 sources referenced.