Forum Discussion
Prompt Lab: Three Critical Bugs That Make It Unusable as a Prompt Management Tool
Product: Microsoft 365 Copilot — Prompt Lab (accessed via ... button in Copilot Chat) Date: June 1, 2026 Environment: M365 Copilot, Web (Edge), Work IQ mode
Bug #1: Empty State Crash
Steps to reproduce:
- Open Prompt Lab via the ... button in Copilot Chat
- Ensure "Your saved prompts" contains zero prompts (either as a new user or by deleting all saved prompts)
- Observe the result
Expected behavior: An empty state placeholder (e.g., "You haven't saved any prompts yet.")
Actual behavior: The entire Prompt Lab panel throws a red error banner: "Something went wrong. Please close the dialog and try again later." The "Your saved prompts" category does not render at all. The panel only shows Microsoft's preset categories (Prompt topics, Agent prompts).
Why this matters: An empty container is a valid state — it is literally every new user's initial state. A UI component should never crash because a list has zero items. This is a null/empty array handling failure that should have been caught by basic QA.
Bug #2: Search Does Not Index User's Saved Prompts
Steps to reproduce:
- Save a custom prompt with a distinctive title (e.g., "AI每日新闻") and body containing the keyword "AI"
- Open Prompt Lab
- Use the search box at the bottom to search for "AI"
Expected behavior: Search results include the user's saved prompt alongside Microsoft's preset prompts.
Actual behavior: Only Microsoft preset prompts matching "AI" are returned (e.g., "Stay on top of AI," "Prompt Compliance"). The user's own saved prompt — whose title and body both contain "AI" — does not appear in the results.
Why this matters: The search box creates a false expectation that it searches all prompts. In reality, it only indexes Microsoft's template library. This means as a user accumulates more saved prompts, the only way to find one is manual scrolling. A search function that excludes user-created content is fundamentally broken by design.
Bug #3: Saved Prompts Lost During Migration
Context: The standalone Copilot Lab / Prompt Gallery app was retired on July 15, 2025, and its functionality was merged into the built-in Prompt Lab within Copilot Chat.
What happened: All previously saved prompts from the old Copilot Lab app are gone. They do not appear in the new Prompt Lab's "Your saved prompts" section. There was no migration notice, no export tool for end users, and no recovery path.
Why this matters: Users invested time curating and refining their prompt libraries. Silently dropping that data during a platform migration — without warning, backup, or migration tooling — is a breach of user trust.
Summary
These three issues compound into a single conclusion: Prompt Lab is currently non-functional as a prompt management tool.
| Capability | Status |
|---|---|
| Reliable storage | ❌ Data lost during migration |
| Empty state handling | ❌ Crashes when empty |
| Search / retrieval | ❌ Does not index user content |
| Displaying Microsoft templates | ✅ Works |
The only feature that works correctly is showcasing Microsoft's own preset prompts. For a tool whose entire purpose is to help users save, organize, and reuse their own prompts, this is an unacceptable state of quality.
I'd strongly recommend the team prioritize: (1) proper null-state handling, (2) including user prompts in the search index, and (3) investigating whether migrated prompt data can be recovered from Substrate.