File Retrieval Issue: Copilot Agent not searching all Sharepoint files in a folder

Question

File Retrieval Issue: Copilot Agent not searching all Sharepoint files in a folder

Anonymous

Has anyone ran into an issue where an agent made in Copilot Studio refuses to look at all files contained in a Sharepoint Folder, even a simple question of 'list all files contained in your knowledge' only returns 5 of the same files, when there are 25 files currently. This problem is occurring in more in-depth questions where i require data from specific files too. Is there any way to ensure the agent does use every file available to it or is this just an issue with Copilot agents / Sharepoint file retrieval.

Neutrino Sunset 21 Reputation points

2025-12-30T21:22:30.4366667+00:00

6 months later I'm still seeing the exact same issue.

Add a knowledge source to a CoPilot Studio agent pointing to a SharePoint Online folder with 10 trivial 50KB docx files in, all files the exact same format.

After a couple of hours I ask it how many files are in the folder, "5" it reports confidently.

Days later, I ask it how many files are in the folder, "5" it says.

I add a couple more files, wait some hours, then ask it how many files are in the folder, "5" it says.

Helpfully it lists the 5 files it's found. Oddly it's a different 5 files each time.

Unbelievable piece of garbage. I can't believe MS has the audacity to require a premiuim licence for this. I've never seen a product less ready for production use in 30 years of development.

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Neutrino Sunset 21 Reputation points

2025-12-30T21:22:30.4366667+00:00

6 months later I'm still seeing the exact same issue.

Add a knowledge source to a CoPilot Studio agent pointing to a SharePoint Online folder with 10 trivial 50KB docx files in, all files the exact same format.

After a couple of hours I ask it how many files are in the folder, "5" it reports confidently.

Days later, I ask it how many files are in the folder, "5" it says.

I add a couple more files, wait some hours, then ask it how many files are in the folder, "5" it says.

Helpfully it lists the 5 files it's found. Oddly it's a different 5 files each time.

Unbelievable piece of garbage. I can't believe MS has the audacity to require a premiuim licence for this. I've never seen a product less ready for production use in 30 years of development.

Answer 1

Ayush Giri 255 Microsoft External Staff

Hi Eamonn,this can happen due to a few common reasons:

Partial Indexing – Copilot may not load all files. Try refreshing the data source in Copilot Studio.
Permissions – Make sure the agent has read access to all files in the SharePoint folder.
File Types/Sizes – Ensure all files are supported formats (PDF, DOCX, XLSX) and not too large.
Folder Path/View – Custom SharePoint views or wrong folder paths can hide files. Use the root folder path.
Knowledge Scope – Check in Copilot Studio if only 5 files are indexed. You may need to reconfigure the knowledge base.

You can also use Power Automate or Graph API to confirm file visibility.

Zoe Lei 0 Reputation points

2025-06-03T19:30:54.9166667+00:00

In Microsoft Copilot Studio, when SharePoint is used as a knowledge source, is the chatbot able to retrieve content from previous published versions of a document, or only from the most recent version?
Zahir Balaporia 5 Reputation points

2025-10-03T17:52:44.9933333+00:00

We have a set of files that are meeting minutes from weekly meetings in 2024. So we have ~50 word docs. Each doc is small (approx 2 pages). Each doc clearly has the date of the meeting and who attended. We wanted Copilot to summarize how many meetings there were and then summarize how many meetings each person attended. It does a great job with about 10 files and then stops.

Permissions are fine. File have been sitting there for months so it can't be a delay in indexing. All the files are in one sharepoint folder. If it can get to 10 it should be able to get to all. And the 10 it picks are random so it can't be permission related. Have used agent in Copilot studio as well as other approaches. All seem to suffer from the number of files limit.

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File Retrieval Issue: Copilot Agent not searching all Sharepoint files in a folder

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