---
title: "What Copilot can and cannot see"
description: "Sometimes Copilot seems to know everything, sometimes it cannot find a document that is right there. How its index works, what falls out of view, and what you can do about it."
language: en
source: https://coachsteff.live/en/wat-copilot-wel-en-niet-ziet
---

# What Copilot can and cannot see

The same thing happens in almost every Copilot workshop. Someone asks a question about a project and gets a surprisingly complete answer, with references to emails, a Teams conversation and a document on SharePoint. A few minutes later, a colleague asks about a procedure that has existed for years, and Copilot knows nothing about it. How is that possible?

## A signpost, not an archive

The answer lies in how Copilot gets its knowledge. Within a Microsoft 365 environment, Copilot builds an index across your OneDrive, SharePoint, mailbox and Teams. Microsoft currently calls this layer Work IQ, and the name might still change.

Important to know: that index does not keep a copy of your documents. It keeps references to where the information is located. A kind of signpost. When you ask a question, Copilot looks up the relevant pieces via those signposts, and only the pieces that you have access to yourself. The index is updated as new emails, messages and documents are added.