SharePoint Online Weekly Update — June 30, 2026

New SharePoint Experience Is Rolling Out Now

Microsoft has begun rolling out a refreshed SharePoint experience that redesigns the app bar and start page. The update is expected to complete between mid-June and late July 2026. The goal is a simpler, cleaner interface that reduces visual noise and puts your content front and center — with better readability and a more modern aesthetic across all key surfaces.

The new start page makes it faster to find sites, content, and recent news. For organizations using Microsoft 365 Copilot, the redesigned experience also surfaces an AI-assisted site and page creation flow, allowing users to spin up new SharePoint sites through natural-language prompts.

What to do: No action required for most tenants — the update rolls out automatically. Communicate the visual change to end users so they aren't caught off guard.

Copilot in SharePoint Begins Rolling Out

What Microsoft previewed as Knowledge Agent in late 2025 and later rebranded as AI in SharePoint is now officially called Copilot in SharePoint — and it started rolling out as an opt-out preview in mid-June 2026 for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

With Copilot in SharePoint, users can ask questions about content stored in sites, create SharePoint pages and lists using natural language, and generate interactive reports from their documents and library data. The system also automatically extracts and applies metadata, keeping libraries structured and search-ready for accurate Copilot responses across Microsoft 365.

Additionally, a new SharePoint Admin Agent is now available in the SharePoint admin center. It surfaces tenant-level insights, recommendations, and contextual guidance using natural language — helping administrators identify configuration issues, manage permissions, and optimize their environment without digging through settings manually.

What to do: If your organization holds Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, expect Copilot in SharePoint to appear for those users shortly. Review the opt-out settings in the admin center if you need to stage the rollout. Begin planning governance guidance so users understand what Copilot can access.

SharePoint Skills via Copilot (May 2026 Update)

In a May 2026 update, Microsoft introduced SharePoint Skills — a feature that lets users capture repeatable, multi-step workflows as reusable site-level assets. Using natural language, team members can create skills that encode organizational standards (e.g., document review checklists, metadata guidelines, approval processes) and share them across the team for consistent execution.

This is a significant step toward embedding organizational knowledge directly into SharePoint sites rather than relying on institutional memory or external documentation.

July Retirement: SharePoint OTP Authentication

Starting in July 2026, Microsoft will retire SharePoint's One-Time Passcode (OTP) authentication for external sharing. All external access will transition to Microsoft Entra B2B, which provides a more secure, centrally governed external identity model.

After this change, external sharing invitations, authentication, and audit tracking will all flow through Entra B2B — giving administrators access to Conditional Access policies, Identity Protection controls, and unified guest governance from the Entra admin center.

What to do: Review your current external sharing settings and ensure your guest access policies in Microsoft Entra are configured correctly before July. Audit any active OTP-based sharing links that may break during the transition.

July 14 Retirement: InfoPath Forms Service

InfoPath Client 2013 reaches end of extended support on July 14, 2026, and InfoPath Forms Service will simultaneously be retired from SharePoint Online. Microsoft has been signaling this retirement for years, but this date marks the hard deadline.

Organizations still running InfoPath-based forms in SharePoint should migrate to modern alternatives: Power Apps for custom form experiences, Power Automate for approval workflows, or Microsoft Forms for simpler data collection scenarios.

What to do: Inventory all InfoPath forms still in use across your tenant immediately. Prioritize migration based on business criticality. This deadline is firm.

Markdown File Commenting Coming to SharePoint & OneDrive

Microsoft is adding inline commenting support for Markdown (.md) files stored in OneDrive and SharePoint. Teams will be able to leave comments on specific sections of a Markdown file and receive @mention notifications — bringing the same collaborative annotation experience that's long been available for Office documents to Markdown content.

What to do: No action needed. This feature will be a welcome addition for developer teams and documentation-heavy projects already storing Markdown in SharePoint.

Standalone SharePoint & OneDrive Plans No Longer Available

As of June 1, 2026, Microsoft stopped selling standalone SharePoint Online Plan 1, SharePoint Online Plan 2, OneDrive for Business Plan 1, and OneDrive for Business Plan 2. New customers can no longer purchase these standalone SKUs and must instead license SharePoint and OneDrive as part of a Microsoft 365 bundle.

What to do: Existing standalone plan subscribers are not immediately affected, but should plan for eventual migration to bundled licensing. Contact your Microsoft reseller for renewal options.

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Sources

• Microsoft Tech Community: A New SharePoint Look and Feel
• Super Simple 365: New SharePoint Experience (2026)
• Super Simple 365: AI in SharePoint is now Copilot in SharePoint
• Microsoft Tech Community: Introducing New Agentic Building in SharePoint
• Microsoft 365 Roadmap — SharePoint
• AdminDroid: Microsoft 365 End-of-Support Milestones
• SharePoint Library: SharePoint 2026 Updates & Migrations