Microsoft changes something in SharePoint and Microsoft 365 almost every week, and most small businesses only find out when something stops working. This is a plain-English round-up of the changes that matter this month, what each one means for your team, and the one or two things worth doing about it. Dates come from Microsoft's roadmap and admin notices, and Microsoft often adjusts them, so treat them as targets rather than promises.
1. Copilot is now built into SharePoint
Copilot in SharePoint started rolling out to everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence on 30 September 2026. It appears in sites, pages and libraries without anyone switching it on, and it can summarise, answer questions about and help create content from the files people can open.
What it means for you: Copilot shows people anything they already have access to. If files were shared with "Everyone" years ago, or old "anyone with the link" links still work, Copilot can surface salary sheets, contracts or HR notes to the wrong person.
What to do: before your team leans on Copilot, review who can see your sensitive sites and folders, and remove broad sharing you no longer need. My Copilot Readiness & Findability Audit does exactly this.
2. Clients may suddenly lose access to your shared links
Two sharing changes are landing together. The old one-time codes that let outsiders open your SharePoint and OneDrive files are being retired between mid-October and the end of November, so clients and contractors without a guest account will start seeing "access denied" on links that used to work. And the new Share window gives every file one main link that you can change after sending it.
What to do: if someone loses access, share any one file with them again, using the same email address, and their access to everything comes back. The full fix, including what admins can do in advance, is in Clients can't open your SharePoint links?
3. A redesigned SharePoint mobile app
From mid-October, the SharePoint app on iPhone and Android is being replaced with a new design. A single Discover view brings files, sites, people and news together in place of the old Find, News and Me tabs, and the app gains in-app file previews, refreshed news and search, and dark mode. It arrives through normal app updates, with no admin action needed.
What to do: tell your team it's coming so they aren't confused when the app looks different. If people rely on your intranet's top menu to find things, add the most-used links as quick links on your home page too, so they're easy to reach on a phone.
4. Comment directly on PDFs in SharePoint and OneDrive
Between mid-October and mid-November, the PDF viewer in SharePoint and OneDrive on the web gains anchored comments: you can highlight a specific part of a PDF and leave a comment on it, instead of downloading the file or emailing notes back and forth. It's on by default.
What to do: nothing to set up. It's worth showing anyone who reviews contracts, proposals or reports as PDFs, because it keeps feedback attached to the right file.
5. The FAQ web part's AI moves into Copilot
From late October, creating FAQs with AI moves out of the SharePoint FAQ web part and into Copilot in SharePoint. You can still write and edit FAQs by hand in the web part, and existing FAQ pages keep working unchanged.
6. Older email tools are being switched off
Microsoft began switching off Exchange Web Services (EWS) in Microsoft 365 on 1 October, business by business, with a final shutdown on 1 April 2027. Apple Mail on Mac, old Outlook for Mac and some older backup and CRM tools rely on it and can quietly stop working. The checks and fixes are in Work email stopped working in Apple Mail?
7. Already retired: Publisher and SharePoint Alerts
- —Microsoft Publisher stopped working for Microsoft 365 subscribers on 1 October. Your .pub files are still there: how to open them and what to use instead.
- —SharePoint Alerts ("Alert me" emails) have stopped. Use SharePoint Rules or Power Automate instead: how to get your notifications back.
8. Plan ahead: licences and features ending in early 2027
- —Standalone SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business plans (Plan 1 and Plan 2) are being retired. Microsoft stopped selling them to new customers in mid-2026, and from January 2027 they can't be renewed. If your team uses SharePoint through one of these plans rather than a Microsoft 365 Business plan, check your renewal date and plan the move now.
- —Restricted SharePoint Search, a stop-gap some businesses used to hide sites from Copilot, fully retires on 31 January 2027. The lasting fix is tidy permissions.
Coming next
- —Safer Teams chats (November): Teams will warn about suspicious first-contact messages from outside your organisation and check the destination of QR codes shared in messages.
- —Meeting notes in the organiser's OneDrive (November): Loop meeting notes for non-channel meetings will be stored in the organiser's OneDrive, not the person who started the notes.
- —Review reminders for site owners (November, preview): a single view of pending ownership, inactivity and access reviews, with due dates.
- —Copilot Search and an agent web part (early 2027): natural-language search across SharePoint and OneDrive with cited answers, and a web part that puts a Copilot agent on a SharePoint page.
Your October checklist
- —Review who can see your sensitive SharePoint sites before Copilot starts surfacing them.
- —Warn clients about the guest-access change, and re-share with anyone who loses access.
- —Tell your team the SharePoint mobile app is changing.
- —Move Mac users to the new Outlook and check your email backup still runs.
- —Check whether you're on a standalone SharePoint or OneDrive plan, and when it renews.
I publish a round-up like this every month. If you're setting up Microsoft 365 properly for the first time, start with my free Microsoft 365 setup checklist.
