SharePoint NoAccess Sites: Search Indexing and Copilot Misconceptions Guide

marwilliams

Microsoft

Oct 08, 2025

What is NoAccess Mode in SharePoint?

NoAccess mode is a site-level setting in SharePoint Online that restricts user access to the site without permanently deleting it. Think of it as putting the site behind a locked door, the content still exists, but no one can open it.

Why Do Organizations Use It?

Temporary Lockdown: When a site is under review, being decommissioned, or needs to be secured quickly.

Compliance & Security: Helps prevent accidental data exposure during audits or ownership changes.

Preserve Data: Unlike deleting a site, NoAccess keeps the content intact for future reference or migration.

How Does It Affect Search and Copilot?

Search Indexing: By default, NoAccess mode does not remove the site from the search index. This means files may still appear in search results unless additional controls (like Restricted Content Discovery or NoCrawl) are applied.

Copilot Behavior: Copilot uses the same index as Microsoft Search. If a site remains indexed, Copilot can surface summaries or references to its content even if users can’t open the files. This is why governance settings like Restricted Access Control or disabling indexing are critical when using Copilot.

Why does this happen?

NoAccess blocks site access, not indexing. The site remains in the search index unless indexing is explicitly disabled or Restricted Content Discovery (RCD) is enabled.

Security trimming still applies. Users will only see items they have direct permissions to (e.g., via shared links). They cannot open anything they don’t have access to.

Copilot respects permissions. It uses the same security model as Microsoft Search and Graph, so it never bypasses access controls.

Low Priority. Marking a site as NoAccess is a bulk operation that goes into a low priority queue, specifically to avoid system bottlenecks and ensure real-time content changes are prioritized over less critical updates which means it can take much longer than expected for those sites to stop appearing in search results.

  What are the options to fully hide content?

Turn off Allow this site to appear in search results: This setting removes the site from indexing. Note: change the search setting BEFORE setting NoAccess to a site.

Enable Restricted Content Discovery (RCD): This hides the site from search and Copilot while keeping it accessible to those with permissions. There is a PowerShell cmdlet available:

Set-SPOSite –identity <site-url> -RestrictContentOrgWideSearch $true

Please note that for larger sites, both the RCD and no-crawl processes may require a minimum of a week to reflect updates. According to the RCD documentation, sites with more than 500,000 pages could experience update times exceeding one week.

What are the options to get Site Crawl information?

When setting up the site for NoCrawl, you can run REST to see if the items are returning in search from that site. You can use a simple REST call like:
```
https://contoso.sharepoint.com/_api/search/query?querytext='path:"<siteurl>"'&sourceid='8413cd39-2156-4e00-b54d-11efd9abdb89'&trimduplicates=false.
```
You have to login into the tenant first. An XML object will be generated, please look for <d:TotalRows m:type="Edm.Int32">1</d:TotalRows> you will see the count going down, at some point the count will be equals to 0, that means all items were removed from index.

You can use PnP to check the site settings, here an example - Enable/Disable Search Crawling on Sites and Libraries | PnP Samples, remember PnP is open source and it is not supported by Microsoft.