Microsoft stops force-installing the Microsoft 365 Copilot app
Summary
Microsoft has temporarily stopped automatically installing the Microsoft 365 Copilot app (an AI assistant integrated with productivity software like Word and Excel) on Windows devices outside the European Economic Area, though the company has not explained why the rollout was halted. When the automatic installation resumes, IT administrators will be able to disable it through the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center by unchecking the automatic installation setting.
Solution / Mitigation
According to the source, when automatic installation resumes, IT administrators can opt out by: signing into the Microsoft 365 Apps admin center, navigating to Customization > Device Configuration > Modern App Settings, selecting the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and clearing the 'Enable automatic installation of Microsoft 365 Copilot app' checkbox. Additionally, the source mentions that Microsoft is testing a new policy called RemoveMicrosoftCopilotApp that would allow IT admins to uninstall Copilot from devices managed via Microsoft Intune or System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM, software for managing large numbers of computers).
Classification
Affected Vendors
Related Issues
Original source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-stops-force-installing-the-microsoft-365-copilot-app/
First tracked: March 17, 2026 at 10:00 AM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 85%