Forum Discussion
Web Search in Copilot Notebooks Still Disabled Despite Policy Configuration
To enable web search in a Copilot policy in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, make sure the feature is turned on, then run the Sync-CopilotPolicy -Identity Global command to force the policy to sync, and then tap Refresh Permissions in the Notebook interface. Business users will have to wait 1-2 hours for the policy to take effect.
I can't believe it. Is everyone just copying and pasting forum questions into an AI system and trying to answer them here? Your statement is completely incorrect.
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried running Sync-CopilotPolicy -Identity Global, but it looks like that cmdlet isn’t recognized in my environment:
Sync-CopilotPolicy : The term 'Sync-CopilotPolicy' is not recognized as a name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or executable program.After further research, it seems that this command isn’t part of any public PowerShell module (e.g., Microsoft.Graph or MSOnline) and is an internal tool or preview-only command used by Microsoft support staff or pre-release programs. Can anyone confirm this?
That said, I’ve already:
Enabled the “Allow web search in Copilot” policy in the M365 Apps admin center.
Verified the registry key at:
HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Cloud\Office\16.0\Common\Copilot\CopilotWebSearch = 1
Confirmed that users are on the Current Channel with full Copilot licensing.
Ensured there are no GPO or Intune conflicts.
Tested after waiting well beyond the policy propagation window.Despite that, the “Web content” toggle in Copilot Notebooks remains greyed out.
At this point, can I assume the feature is still controlled by a Microsoft-side feature flag and simply hasn’t been rolled out to my tenant yet?
If anyone sees the toggle activated in their tenant — especially post-Targeted Release — I’d love to hear about it. Thanks again for your input!
apathetic505 Did you see my message? I'm not sure what radmiru did to provide you with such inaccurate information, but it seems like the response you received was AI-generated and lacks any real understanding of the product.
If you re-check the cloud policy with the screenshot provided from my side and web search is still disabled, I would recommend validating that this policy control is in the right priority of other policies:
Would it be possible to either make a new policy or modify the order of your policy? The highest priority will be applied to the system
Thanks PeterForster, — I really appreciate your thoughtful reply and the clarification you've provided.
You've essentially answered the question I should have asked more directly but wasn’t sure how to frame: “Is Web Content currently supported in Copilot Notebooks?” Based on your explanation, the answer appears to be no — even though the “Allow web search in Copilot” policy exists and the toggle appears (albeit greyed out) in the Notebook chat interface.
To test this, I started a Copilot chat outside of a Notebook with Web Content enabled, then added that chat to a Notebook. Once inside the Notebook, the Web Content toggle became disabled again — which aligns with what you described.
The confusion stems from the presence of the toggle, the existence of a policy that implies support, and the lack of a definitive statement from Microsoft confirming whether this feature is supported in Notebooks. That ambiguity led me to believe it was a misconfiguration on my end.
That said, I’ll still try your suggestion of adjusting policy priority or creating a new one to rule out any policy conflicts — but it’s helpful to know this may simply be a feature limitation rather than a deployment issue.
Previous order:
New order:
Thanks again for helping clarify this — your insight is much appreciated.
