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Teramo's avatar
Teramo
Copper Contributor
Jan 29, 2026

Copilot missing in Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop apps of some users

Hi Everyone,

At my company we're setting up copilot. After allowing access through the Admin Centers we've encountered various oddities.

  • Some users can use the sharepoint/onedrive search functionality. But most can't.
  • Some users have the Copilot button in some of their apps.
  • There is no consistency in which app they get it. Some have it in word, others in excel, some in multiple, some in none.
  • A handful of users have Copilot in all apps.
  • Things like transcribe work fine everywhere.
  • We switched intune to push Office apps with Current Channel instead of Semi-Annual, to no avail. 

We use M365 Business premium with the Teams phone standard addon.

copilot control system
copilot in excel
Copilot in Loop
copilot in onedrive
copilot in onenote
copilot in outlook
copilot in powerpoint
Copilot in SharePoint
copilot in word

1 Reply

  • Surya_Narayana's avatar
    Surya_Narayana
    MCT
    Jan 31, 2026

    hi Teramo​ You're not alone , we've seen very similar "partial Copilot" behavior during initial rollouts.

    A few things worth calling out from experience:

    • Copilot enablement is very service-side heavy. Even when licensing and admin settings are correct, features don't always light up consistently across apps at the same time. It's not unusual to see Word/Excel/PowerPoint behave differently per user during rollout.
    • License + eligibility check: Copilot for M365 requires the Copilot add-on and an eligible base license. Business Premium is supported, but it's still worth double-checking that every affected user has the Copilot SKU assigned and fully provisioned.
    • Connected Experiences / privacy settings: Copilot in Office desktop apps depends on "Optional connected experiences" being enabled. If this is controlled via policy (Intune / GPO), inconsistent settings can cause exactly the symptoms you're describing.
    • Office build matters more than channel: Even on Current Channel, users need to be on a sufficiently recent build. We've seen Copilot appear only after a full Office update + app restart (sometimes more than once).
    • Cache / profile oddities: In a few cases, signing out of Office, closing all apps, and signing back in helped the Copilot UI appear, not elegant, but it worked for some users.

    The fact that Copilot works in some apps and not others, and works for some users tenant-wide, strongly points to a backend rollout / entitlement sync issue rather than anything you've misconfigured locally.

    If this has been stable for more than a few days, I'd recommend opening a Microsoft support ticket and asking them to:

    • Validate Copilot entitlements for affected users
    • Check Copilot feature flighting status for your tenant
    • Confirm there are no service incidents impacting Office desktop Copilot

    Would be really interested to hear if others are seeing the same inconsistency right now - especially in Business Premium tenants.

     

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