Unexpected forced‑citation behavior in Copilot (making minutes from transcript)

Hi everyone,

I’d like to raise a problem I encountered recently when using Copilot for meeting‑minutes generation. I’m curious whether others are seeing the same behavior, and whether this is an intentional change or a bug.

What happened

While generating meeting minutes, Copilot was provided with:

• an agenda (Word document),
• a set of personal notes (Word),
• a meeting transcript (Word).
• and a Standard Operating Procedure on what I exactly want (style of writing, abbreviations etc.)

This is a workflow that previously worked flawlessly.
Copilot could combine the content and produce a clean, citation‑free output suitable for direct use in official documentation.

However, during my most recent session, Copilot suddenly enforced mandatory citation insertion for any content derived from uploaded files or tool‑accessed data. The system required inline citation markers for everything — even routine content like agenda headings, contextual expansions, or narrative descriptions drawn from the transcript.

Why this is a problem

For many users, especially in environments where:

• minutes must follow a strict template,
• output must be clean and ready for distribution,
• citations, footnotes, tags, metadata, or brackets are not permitted,

…the new forced‑citation behavior creates several issues:

1. Copilot can no longer produce clean narrative minutes

Even when instructed explicitly to:

• avoid citations,
• avoid file references,
• avoid metadata,

Copilot still attempts to insert forced citation tags if it believes the content originates from a file or tool call.

2. Copilot refuses to proceed if citations are disallowed

When asked to generate the minutes without citations (as required), Copilot stops and reports that it cannot continue because the system now requires citations for any file‑based content.

3. Workarounds are impractical

Possible workarounds offered by Copilot included:

• manually pasting tens of pages of transcript text into the chat,
• accepting citations and manually removing them afterwards, or
• reconstructing content without referencing the original documents.

These options either cause significant manual work or lead to loss of accuracy.

Impact

This effectively means that Copilot can no longer:

• merge agenda + notes + transcript into a single clean output,
• produce minutes using uploaded source documents,
• deliver professional documentation without embedded reference markers.

For scenarios where clean formatting is mandatory (e.g., governance documentation, legal minutes, internal councils, compliance‑driven reporting), this makes Copilot unusable for meeting‑minute generation under the previous workflow.

Questions for the community

• Has anyone else noticed this new forced‑citation requirement when working with uploaded files or transcripts?
• Is this an intentional design change, a temporary system rule, or an unintended side‑effect of a recent update?
• Is there a supported method to allow Copilot to generate narrative content from uploaded documents without inserting citation tags?
• Are there recommended best practices for producing clean, citation‑free procedural minutes using Copilot under the current rules?

I would really appreciate insights from others who rely on Copilot for structured meeting‑minute generation, as this change has significantly disrupted a previously stable workflow.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or experiences you can share.

(and yes, Copilot drafted this message for me ;-) )