Microsoft Copilot Not Working? 6 Fixes That Actually Work (2026)

The Copilot button was there yesterday. Today it’s gone. Or it’s there but clicking it does nothing. Or it spins forever and comes back with “Something went wrong.” You’re not imagining it — Microsoft Copilot not working is one of the most reported AI issues right now, with Downdetector logging over 14,000 user reports on June 1, 2026 alone.

Most guides send you straight to IT admin territory — license checks, Azure AD policies, tenant configuration. That’s not you. You just want the button to work. Here’s what actually fixes it, in order of how often each cause turns out to be the real problem.

First: Which Copilot Are You Using?

Microsoft has several different products all called “Copilot” and they break in different ways. Knowing which one you’re on takes 10 seconds and saves a lot of wasted troubleshooting.

The fixes are different depending on which one stopped working. The sections below cover the consumer version and M365 version — the two most common. GitHub Copilot has its own separate troubleshooting path.

Is It Microsoft’s Problem Right Now?

Before touching any settings, spend 30 seconds checking this. Copilot had major outages on May 29 and June 1, 2026 — during those windows, nothing you did locally would have fixed it.

Go to status.microsoft.com and look for Copilot or Microsoft 365 entries. If anything shows as “investigating” or “degraded” — that’s your answer. Wait it out.

Fixes That Actually Work

1 Sign out and sign back in — but do it properly

This is the fix that works most often, and most people do it wrong. Clicking “sign out” in the Copilot UI isn’t enough — stale authentication tokens stay cached. You need to clear the credential cache too.

On Windows: Open Control Panel → Credential Manager → Windows Credentials → find any entries with “MicrosoftOffice” or “Microsoft365” → remove them → restart the app and sign back in.

On the web: Sign out of your Microsoft account at account.microsoft.com, clear browser cookies for microsoft.com (not your entire cache — just microsoft.com), then sign back in fresh.

2 Open incognito and test there first

If you’re using Copilot on the web or in Edge, open an incognito/private window (Ctrl+Shift+N) and go to copilot.microsoft.com. If it works there and not in your normal browser, a browser extension is blocking it — usually an ad blocker, privacy tool, or VPN extension.

I’ve seen uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger both silently break Copilot’s script loading. Disable extensions one by one to find the culprit, then whitelist copilot.microsoft.com in that extension.

3 The Copilot button disappeared from Windows taskbar

This one trips up a lot of people after a Windows update. The button doesn’t break — it just gets toggled off.

Right-click on an empty area of the taskbar → Taskbar settings → scroll down to “Copilot” → toggle it back on. On Windows 11 24H2 and later, this setting moved to Settings → Personalization → Taskbar.

4 Copilot missing from Word, Excel, or Outlook

This is the M365 Copilot situation. The button disappearing from Office apps almost always comes down to one of three things:

• Your license doesn’t include it. M365 Copilot is a $30/user/month add-on — it’s not included in standard M365 Business Basic, E3, or even E5. If your company didn’t purchase it separately, the button won’t appear. Check at myaccount.microsoft.com under Subscriptions.
• The license isn’t assigned to your account. Even if your company has M365 Copilot seats, your specific account might not have one assigned. Your IT admin handles this — ask them to check in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
• Your Office apps need updating. M365 Copilot requires a recent version of the Office apps. Go to File → Account → Update Options → Update Now in any Office app.

5 “Something went wrong” or Copilot keeps spinning

This error usually means one of three things: a server-side hiccup (check status.microsoft.com first), a network issue, or a corrupted app cache.

For the network angle — if you’re on a corporate network or VPN, Copilot’s requests might be getting blocked by a firewall or proxy. Try switching to your phone’s hotspot and testing. If it works there, the issue is your network environment, not Copilot itself.

For the app cache on Windows: close all Office apps → open Run (Win+R) → type %localappdata%\Microsoft\Office\16.0\ → delete the folder named “OfficeFileCache” → reopen the app. This clears stale data without touching your files.

6 Copilot in Edge sidebar not loading

Edge’s Copilot sidebar has its own quirks. If the sidebar icon is gone: Settings → Sidebar → Copilot → toggle on. If it loads but shows an error, try signing out of Edge (Settings → Profile → Sign out) and signing back in. Edge stores its own separate authentication session that can get out of sync with your Microsoft account.

Also worth trying: Edge flags (edge://flags) — search for “Copilot” and make sure nothing is set to “Disabled.” A browser update sometimes resets these unexpectedly.

What NOT to Do

• ❌ Uninstalling and reinstalling Office — this takes 30+ minutes and doesn’t fix authentication or license issues
• ❌ Reinstalling Windows — never the answer for a Copilot issue
• ❌ Clearing your entire browser cache — targeted cookie clearing for microsoft.com is enough; wiping everything logs you out of everything else for no benefit
• ❌ Spending time troubleshooting during a confirmed outage — check status.microsoft.com first, every time

Still Not Working? Alternatives While You Wait

If Copilot is down for a sustained period and you need an AI assistant right now:

• Claude (Anthropic) — strong at document drafting, summarization, and writing tasks — covers most of what M365 Copilot does in Word and Outlook
• ChatGPT — good for quick tasks, runs on completely separate infrastructure
• Google Gemini — integrates with Google Workspace if you use that alongside M365