How to keep Copilot in SharePoint off a site after the PowerShell opt-out ends

A client opted a handful of sites out of the Copilot in SharePoint preview with Set-SPOTenant back in June (e.g:HR and Legal sites at a government client). Microsoft has now confirmed those PowerShell settings are honoured only until 1 November 2026 (MC1479277). After that, the job moves to site AI settings and Restricted Content Discovery, and the two don’t do the same thing.

Here is how I’d find the sites you opted out and set them again before the deadline.

Prerequisites

• SharePoint Administrator role.
• SharePoint Online Management Shell 16.0.26615.12013 or later.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot licences in the tenant. Restricted Content Discovery also needs SharePoint Advanced Management available.
• Owner rights on the site, for the site AI settings method.

Find the sites you opted out

The preview controls were three Set-SPOTenant parameters: KnowledgeAgentScope, KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList and KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesListOperation. Export what you set before it stops meaning anything.

This uses the SharePoint Online Management Shell.

$AdminURL = "https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com"Connect-SPOService -Url

$AdminURLGet-SPOTenant | Select-Object KnowledgeAgentScope, KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList |    Format-List

What the result means:

• ExcludeSelectedSites: the URLs in the list are your opted-out sites.
• IncludeSelectedSites: every site not in the list is opted out. That can be most of the tenant.
• NoSites: Copilot was off everywhere.
• AllSites: nothing was opted out.

Note: the list holds 100 URLs at most, so it’s short. Save it to a file now.

Using site AI settings

Most posts about the deadline point you here, but read what it does first. Site AI settings lets the owner hide the Copilot button for site visitors only. Owners and members still see it. It doesn’t remove Copilot from the site.

1. Open the site as an owner.
2. Select Settings (gear icon) > Site AI. The site AI settings panel opens.
3. Turn on the option to hide the Show Copilot button to site visitors.
4. Under the agent option, pick whether the header agent icon opens Copilot in SharePoint or a custom agent.
5. Save.

To check, open the site in a private window as a user in the Visitors group. The Copilot button shouldn’t appear on pages.

I use this for intranet and communication sites where visitors are most of the audience and nobody needs Copilot there. 

Note: the list holds 100 URLs at most, so it’s short. Save it to a file now.

Using SharePoint admin center (Restricted Content Discovery)

If the site was opted out because of what’s in it, this is the setting you want. With Restricted Content Discovery on, Copilot in SharePoint, the AI actions menu and Create pages with AI don’t appear on the site at all, whatever the other settings say. Permissions don’t change and the content stays in the search index.

1. Open the SharePoint admin center and go to Sites > Active sites.
2. Select the site name. The details panel opens.
3. Select the Settings tab.
4. Turn on Restrict content Discovery from Microsoft Copilot.
5. Select Save.

The site gets a Restricted tag. Its content also drops out of org-wide search on SharePoint home and Office.com, and out of tenant-wide Copilot answers. Search inside the site still works. Tell the site owner before you do this.

Using PowerShell

This reads your exported list and turns on Restricted Content Discovery for each site. It needs the SharePoint Online Management Shell.

$AdminURL = "https://contoso-admin.sharepoint.com"
$CsvPath  = "C:\Temp\copilot-optout-sites.csv"# one column called Url

Connect-SPOService -Url $AdminURL

Import-Csv $CsvPath | ForEach-Object {
    Set-SPOSite -Identity $_.Url -RestrictContentOrgWideSearch $true    
    Get-SPOSite -Identity $_.Url | Select-Object Url, RestrictContentOrgWideSearch
}

Each site should come back with RestrictContentOrgWideSearch as True.

If your scope was IncludeSelectedSites, build the CSV from Get-SPOSite -Limit All minus the sites in your include list. Then look hard at that number before running anything. Microsoft describes Restricted Content Discovery as a temporary control to use selectively, and blocking hundreds of sites hurts search for everyone.

Issue I hit

Restricted Content Discovery is not instant. Microsoft says sites with more than 500,000 items can take over a week to fully process. For me on a site with 40 GB document library it took about two days before the Copilot button went away. Do the big sites first, well before 1 November.

Note: if your tenant was on NoSites, there’s no documented tenant-wide replacement after 1st November. Only site-level controls are listed. Plan for that now rather than finding out on the 2nd.