How do I opt out of Copilot in SharePoint?

Run Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites in the SharePoint Online Management Shell as a SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator. That disables Copilot in SharePoint tenant-wide. To verify, run Get-SPOTenant | Select-Object KnowledgeAgentScope . For multi-geo tenants, run the command in each geo. Note the parameter name still uses the Knowledge Agent branding for backwards compatibility.

How do I opt in to Copilot in SharePoint?

Run Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope AllSites to enable across every site in the tenant. Or use IncludeSelectedSites with the KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList parameter to enable on specific sites only. Anthropic as a sub-processor should also be enabled in the Microsoft 365 admin centre for the full preview experience, especially for EU and UK tenants where it is off by default.

What PowerShell command disables Copilot in SharePoint?

Three commands. First, Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com to connect. Second, Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites to disable. Third, Get-SPOTenant | Select-Object KnowledgeAgentScope to verify. Run as a SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator using SharePoint Online Management Shell version 16.0.26615.12013 or later.

Can I enable Copilot in SharePoint per site instead of tenant-wide?

Yes. Set the scope to IncludeSelectedSites and pass a list of site URLs via KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList . The list is capped at 100 sites. For tenants with more than 100 sites to opt in, use ExcludeSelectedSites and pass the smaller set of sites to opt out. Permissions, sensitivity labels, and Restricted Content Discovery policies on each site still apply.

Do I need to enable Anthropic as a sub-processor?

Optional but recommended for the full preview experience. The preview uses an advanced reasoning model that runs on Anthropic Claude when Anthropic is enabled in the Microsoft 365 admin centre. Without it, a Microsoft fallback model handles requests. At the mid-June 2026 opt-out rollout, Copilot in SharePoint runs on OpenAI's GPT-5.4 Reasoning regardless per MC1311968.

Is Anthropic enabled by default for EU/UK tenants?

No. Anthropic is disabled by default for EU and UK customers because Anthropic is currently excluded from EU data boundary commitments. Admins in those regions need to explicitly enable Anthropic in the Microsoft 365 admin centre to access the full preview experience. The setting lives at admin.microsoft.com under Copilot, Settings, Data access.

What happens to existing Knowledge Agent opt-ins after the rename?

Nothing. Tenants that opted into the Knowledge Agent preview in September 2025 keep their configuration through the rename and through the mid-June 2026 opt-out rollout. No re-opt-in needed. The PowerShell parameters retain the Knowledge Agent naming for backwards compatibility during preview, so existing scripts continue to work without changes.

What is the maximum number of sites in the include or exclude list?

100 sites. For tenants needing to opt in or out of more than 100 sites, design the rollout around ExcludeSelectedSites . If you want most sites enabled, list the exceptions to exclude (up to 100). The cap applies per list, not per scope, so the include and exclude variants both share the same 100-site limit.

How do I run this on a multi-geo tenant?

Run the PowerShell separately in each geo. There is no single tenant-wide cross-geo switch. Connect to each geo's admin URL with Connect-SPOService , run the Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope command, and verify. Repeat for every geo. Plan the rollout window so all geos are configured before mid-June 2026.

Copilot in SharePoint opt-out, the admin guide for the June rollout

Q: Why am I getting 'A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name KnowledgeAgentScope'?

Multiple or outdated versions of the SharePoint Online Management Shell are installed. Open Add or Remove Programs, uninstall every SharePoint admin module you find, then run Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell in administrative mode to install version 16.0.26615.12013 or later. Restart PowerShell and try again. Microsoft Learn covers the full troubleshooting steps.

Microsoft is flipping Copilot in SharePoint from opt-in to opt-out from mid-June 2026 (per Message Center notice MC1311968, published 15 May 2026). For every tenant with Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, the default behaviour changes. A floating Copilot button appears in the lower right of every SharePoint site unless an admin actively opts out.

This guide is the admin reference for the decisions you need to make and the PowerShell you need to run before the rollout lands. I have run this PowerShell in client tenants since the original Knowledge Agent preview opened in September 2025. The commands have not changed. The decision around them has, because the default is about to flip.

The TL;DR for SharePoint admins

You have three real options before mid-June.

Do nothing. The rollout enables Copilot in SharePoint on every site in your tenant. Every user with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence sees the floating Copilot button and can use it.
Opt out tenant-wide. One PowerShell command (Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites) and the feature stays off everywhere until you plan a deliberate rollout later.
Scope it. Use IncludeSelectedSites or ExcludeSelectedSites to enable on a controlled set or to keep most sites on while excluding sensitive ones.

The PowerShell is two real lines once you are connected. The decision is the work, not the running.

Three options before the rollout

Pick one of these three before mid-June. The default-on path is the riskiest if your governance or sensitivity review is not done.

Option	When it fits	PowerShell	Risk
Do nothing (default-on)	Tenant has clear AI governance, sensitivity labels in place, content reviewed for oversharing	None needed	High if any of the above is incomplete; Copilot in SharePoint surfaces what users already have access to, and AI makes oversharing more visible
Opt out tenant-wide	Governance review still in progress, sensitivity labels not yet rolled out, or change-control needs a deliberate rollout	`Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites`	Low. Feature stays off until you turn it back on
Scope to selected sites	Pilot a few sites first, or keep most sites enabled while protecting specific sensitive sites	`Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope IncludeSelectedSites` (or `ExcludeSelectedSites`) plus the site list	Low to medium. Depends on which sites you list

If you are not sure which option fits, default to opt out tenant-wide. You can opt back in deliberately once your team has reviewed. The cost of being too cautious is a few weeks of delay. The cost of being too eager is a Monday-morning surprise across hundreds of sites.

Prerequisites

Three things must be in place before the PowerShell will work.

A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence pool. Users without a Copilot licence will not see Copilot in SharePoint regardless of any opt-in. Copilot in SharePoint is included with the existing Copilot licence at no extra cost during preview and general availability.

SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator role. The opt-in and opt-out commands require one of these roles in Microsoft Entra. A regular site owner cannot run them.

SharePoint Online Management Shell version 16.0.26615.12013 or later. Older versions do not recognise the KnowledgeAgentScope parameter and you will get an error. The full setup guide for the Management Shell lives at Microsoft Learn. If you already have it installed, run Update-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell in administrative mode to bring it current.

The PowerShell commands

Every variant, copy-paste-ready. Replace yourtenant with your tenant prefix.

Opt out tenant-wide

The safest pre-rollout move if your team is not ready.

# Connect to SharePoint Online admin
Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com

# Disable Copilot in SharePoint everywhere
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites

# Verify
Get-SPOTenant | Select-Object KnowledgeAgentScope

NoSites is the default value, but explicitly setting it makes the intent clear in change logs.

Opt in to every site

The do-nothing-different position. From mid-June 2026 this is also the default if no scope is set.

Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com

Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope AllSites

Get-SPOTenant | Select-Object KnowledgeAgentScope

Opt in to specific sites only

For a controlled pilot.

Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com

# Switch to the IncludeSelectedSites scope
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope IncludeSelectedSites

# List the sites you want enabled (overwrites any previous list)
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList @(
  "https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/pilot-finance",
  "https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/pilot-it"
)

# Append more sites later without overwriting
Set-SPOTenant `
  -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList @("https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/pilot-people-and-culture") `
  -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesListOperation Append

# Verify
Get-SPOTenant | Select-Object KnowledgeAgentScope, KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList

Keep everything enabled except specific sites

The pattern for tenants where most sites are fine but a handful need protection (board pack, executive comms, legal hold).

Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com

Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope ExcludeSelectedSites

Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList @(
  "https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/board-pack",
  "https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/legal-hold"
)

Get-SPOTenant | Select-Object KnowledgeAgentScope, KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList

For removing a site from the exclusion list without rebuilding the whole list:

Set-SPOTenant `
  -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList @("https://yourtenant.sharepoint.com/sites/board-pack") `
  -KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesListOperation Remove

The Anthropic sub-processor decision

Separate from the scope decision, every tenant has to decide whether to enable Anthropic as a Microsoft sub-processor.

The Microsoft Learn documentation is explicit. The Copilot in SharePoint refreshed preview uses an advanced reasoning model for multi-step planning and execution across SharePoint content. To get the full preview experience, the admin should enable Anthropic as a sub-processor in the Microsoft 365 admin centre. Without it, Copilot in SharePoint still works but uses a Microsoft fallback model and some advanced capabilities vary.

For non-EU tenants, the switch is on by default. No action needed.

For EU and UK tenants, Anthropic is disabled by default. Anthropic is currently excluded from EU data boundary commitments, so Microsoft does not enable it automatically. Admins in those regions need to opt in explicitly.

To enable Anthropic for your tenant:

Go to the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
Open Copilot, then Settings.
On the Data access page, select AI providers operating as Microsoft sub-processors.
Under Available sub-processors for your organisation, select Enable Anthropic as a Microsoft sub-processor subject to the above terms.

Note that at the mid-June 2026 opt-out rollout, MC1311968 confirms Copilot in SharePoint runs on OpenAI's GPT-5.4 Reasoning model. Customer-controlled model selection is not currently available for Copilot in SharePoint specifically, though the Anthropic sub-processor switch still applies to other Microsoft 365 Copilot experiences (the Word, Excel, and PowerPoint Agents fall under it). The full reconciliation of which model runs when lives in the Anthropic in SharePoint article.

Multi-geo tenant considerations

If your tenant uses multi-geo, every geo needs its own opt-in or opt-out. There is no single cross-geo command.

Connect to each geo's admin URL in turn and run the scope command:

# Geo 1
Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-admin.sharepoint.com
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites

# Geo 2 (Europe)
Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-eu-admin.sharepoint.com
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites

# Geo 3 (Asia)
Connect-SPOService https://yourtenant-au-admin.sharepoint.com
Set-SPOTenant -KnowledgeAgentScope NoSites

Repeat for every geo. Document which admin URL maps to which region in your runbook before the rollout window opens; the URL pattern is not always obvious from the geo name and you do not want to be looking it up on the fly.

Versioning errors and how to fix them

The single most common error during opt-in or opt-out:

Set-SPOTenant : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'KnowledgeAgentScope'

This means an older version of the SharePoint Online Management Shell is loaded. The fix is in five steps.

Open Add or remove programs (Control Panel on Windows). Search for SharePoint. Uninstall every SharePoint admin module you find. Older installations live alongside newer ones.
In an administrative PowerShell, run Get-Module -Name *SharePoint* -ListAvailable to list every remaining SharePoint module. If multiple versions appear, run Uninstall-Module -Name <ModuleName> for each older one.
Locate any stragglers with (Get-Module -Name *SharePoint* -ListAvailable).Path and manually delete the parent folder if Uninstall-Module fails.
Close and reopen PowerShell to clear in-memory modules.
Install the latest with Install-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell. Verify the installed version is 16.0.26615.12013 or later with (Get-Module -Name Microsoft.Online.SharePoint.PowerShell -ListAvailable).Version.

If multiple versions still appear after install, repeat steps 2 and 3 until only the current version remains.

What users will see once enabled

Worth knowing before the rollout lands so you can write the comms email.

A user with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence opens any site where Copilot in SharePoint is enabled. A floating Copilot button appears in the lower right of the page, library, or list view. Selecting it opens the chat panel on the right.

From the chat panel, the user can:

Ask questions about content the user already has permission to view
Generate Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and structured HTML reports from natural-language prompts
Invoke Skills installed on the site
Build new Skills using natural-language descriptions
Update list items and library metadata conversationally

Copilot in SharePoint respects existing user permissions throughout. Nothing the user could not access via the normal SharePoint interface is exposed via the chat panel. AI in SharePoint makes existing access more discoverable; it does not expand access.

Site owners with edit permission can also choose which agent opens from the agent icon and can hide the Copilot button for site visitors. If the site has Restricted Content Discovery enabled, no Copilot button appears regardless of tenant opt-in status.

For the deeper walkthrough of every capability, see the three capabilities of Copilot in SharePoint.

How to roll this out responsibly

If you decide to enable Copilot in SharePoint, do not flip every site at once. The features are real but the adoption pattern is fragile in the first month.

A practical sequence I have run in client tenants since September 2025:

Pick one or two pilot sites. Sites with active users, well-organised content, and a willing site owner. Avoid sites with sensitive content for the pilot. Use IncludeSelectedSites to scope to these.
Write the SharePoint.md context file for each pilot site. This single file, dropped in /Agent Assets/SHAREPOINT.md, loads into every chat on the site. Without it, every conversation starts from zero and users get generic answers. The template lives at copilotinsharepoint.com/sharepoint-md-template.md.
Build one or two Skills on each pilot site. The Skill files live at /Agent Assets/Skills/<skill-name>/SKILL.md. The most useful starter Skills are ones that turn an existing manual process into a one-click invocation. Status reports, contract reviews, library audits.
Run the pilot for two to four weeks. Track usage, gather feedback, iterate the SharePoint.md and the Skills.
Expand to additional sites. Move from IncludeSelectedSites to either AllSites (default-on for everyone) or ExcludeSelectedSites (default-on except a known sensitive list).

Skipping the pilot is the most common cause of "we turned it on and nothing happened" outcomes. Users see the button, ask it something generic, get something generic, and stop using it.

The 100-site limit and how to work around it

The KnowledgeAgentSelectedSitesList parameter is capped at 100 site URLs. For most tenants this is fine. For larger tenants it becomes a planning constraint.

Three approaches depending on tenant size and structure.

Under 100 sites in scope. Use IncludeSelectedSites and list the sites directly.

Over 100 sites in scope, with a smaller exclusion list. Use ExcludeSelectedSites and list the sites to exclude. As long as the exclusion list is under 100, this works.

Over 100 sites in scope AND over 100 sites to exclude. This is the awkward case. The current preview does not support both. Options:

Set the scope to AllSites (every site enabled), then use Restricted Content Discovery on the sites that should be excluded. RCD turns off all agent-related features on the flagged sites regardless of tenant scope.
Phase the rollout. Enable a subset of sites first with IncludeSelectedSites, run that phase for some weeks, then switch to AllSites once governance review is complete.

Document the choice in your change-control record. The 100-site cap is a preview-time constraint and may change at general availability; the documentation here applies as of May 2026.

What to do this week

Three actions, in order, for any admin reading this in the run-up to mid-June.

Update the SharePoint Online Management Shell to version 16.0.26615.12013 or later. Do this on every workstation that might need to run the opt-in or opt-out commands. The error message you avoid here is the one that turns a five-minute change into a forty-minute troubleshooting session.
Pick your scope decision from the three options earlier in this guide. Document it. Run the PowerShell on a test tenant first if you have one, then run it on production.
Make the Anthropic sub-processor decision if your tenant is EU or UK. The default is off for those regions. If you want the full preview experience while the preview is still running, you need to enable it manually.

If you want a structured pre-rollout checklist and the SharePoint.md context-file template ready to drop into your most active site, grab the template. It is what I run with clients during the first day of a rollout and saves about half a day of preparation work.

For organisations that want help running the full pre-rollout properly, the Copilot in SharePoint Immersive is a one-day session where we work through this exact decision tree in your tenant with your team. We do the opt-in or opt-out, write the SharePoint.md file, and build three working Skills together. It is the difference between switching the feature on and your team actually using it on Monday.