copilot is not responding

Check Microsoft 365 Service health first, because a reported Microsoft 365/Copilot disruption around November 12–13, 2026 may explain prompts that spin indefinitely; confirm that your tenant’s incident details specifically mention Copilot or the affected apps before treating it as the cause.

1. Check for a matching service incident

Ask your Microsoft 365 administrator to:

1. Sign in to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
2. Go to Health → Service health.
3. Open any active incident or advisory affecting Microsoft Copilot, Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, or their dependent services.
4. Check whether User impact matches prompts loading indefinitely.
5. Follow any workaround or customer action in the incident details.

Service Support administrators and Helpdesk administrators can also view Service health. If there is no matching incident, the administrator can select Report an issue from the Service health page.^1^

If there is a matching incident, retry periodically or after its status changes to Service restored. Avoid reinstalling Office unless the incident details specifically require a client-side action.

2. If Service health is clear

Windows desktop apps

Run Microsoft’s connectivity test:

1. Close Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams.
2. Open the Windows Get Help app.
3. Search for Copilot connectivity troubleshooter.
4. Run it and apply any recommended remedy.
5. Reopen one affected app and submit a short test prompt.

This troubleshooter checks for firewall rules and other connection blockers.^2^

If connectivity passes, update and refresh the Office license:

1. In Word or Excel, select File → Account → Update Options → Update Now.
2. Return to File → Account and select Update License if that option appears.
3. Close all Microsoft 365 applications, reopen one, and test Copilot again.^3^

The Office update path above applies to supported Windows desktop Office applications, not the web apps, Teams, or new Outlook.

macOS

A matching case where Copilot kept loading without output was resolved by updating Office through Microsoft AutoUpdate:^4^

1. Download the current Microsoft AutoUpdate package from
   https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?linkid=830196
2. Open the downloaded .pkg file if it does not start automatically.
3. Run Microsoft AutoUpdate and install all available Office updates.
4. Restart the Mac, reopen the affected app, and test Copilot.

Web apps, Teams, or new Outlook

Test the same account in another supported client—for example, Word on the web versus Word desktop. This distinguishes a device/client issue from an account-wide or tenant-wide problem. If all clients spin indefinitely, escalate to the administrator rather than reinstalling one application.

3. Administrator-only network checks

If the problem affects only users on a corporate network, or disappears on another network, have the network administrator verify that:

• *.cloud.microsoft and copilot.cloud.microsoft are allowed.
• Secure WebSocket connections work to *.office.com, *.cloud.microsoft, and copilot.cloud.microsoft.
• Proxy timeouts, TLS inspection, URL filtering, Conditional Access, or firewall policies are not interrupting Copilot traffic.

Blocked WebSockets or altered Copilot traffic can cause integrations to fail.^5^

If the issue remains after Service health is clear, the connectivity test passes, and the apps are current, report it through Microsoft 365 admin center → Health → Service health → Report an issue, including the affected apps, platform, start time, and whether every user or only one user is affected.

References

1. How to check Microsoft 365 service health
2. Copilot troubleshooters | Microsoft Support
3. Mac
4. copilot is not working. keeps loading, no output - Microsoft Q&A
5. Microsoft Copilot requirements