Copilot restrict accessing specific SharePoint Online

Question

Hello Team,

We are preparing to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot and want to ensure that certain SharePoint Online sites are not accessible by Copilot for content indexing and responses.

However, we still want these sites to remain fully searchable for users through the standard SharePoint and Microsoft 365 organization-wide search.

From my research, both Restricted Content Discovery and Restricted SharePoint Search appear to block content from both Copilot and standard search. Site-level search indexing settings also seem to remove content from both experiences.

Is there currently a way to restrict only Copilot from accessing specific SharePoint sites, while leaving the normal search experience unaffected?

If not, are there any recommended workarounds, or is this capability on the Microsoft roadmap?

Any guidance or best practices would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi S79,

Thank you for your question.

Your understanding is correct. As of June 2025, Microsoft 365 Copilot leverages the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft Search index for content access. Consequently, any mechanism used to restrict Copilot’s access to SharePoint Online content—such as Restricted Content Discovery, Restricted SharePoint Search, or disabling site-level search indexing—will also exclude that content from standard SharePoint and Microsoft 365 search results available to users.

At this time, there is no supported way to selectively restrict Copilot from indexing or accessing specific SharePoint sites while still maintaining their availability in the standard Microsoft 365 search experience.

Thanks, 

Keshav Keshari

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