SharePoint agents now have an expiry date. March 2027.
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MC1511052 sets out this change. From mid-November, “Create an agent” in SharePoint and OneDrive will open Agent Builder, creating a normal Agent Builder agent, rather than creating a .agent file. Existing .agent agents keep working until the end of March 2027, then stop working in a rollout that runs through mid-April.
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Microsoft is offering two upgrade paths, with an Upgrade button in the SharePoint builder and a skill in Copilot in SharePoint that converts a .agent file into a new skill. What surprises me is that this is a manual, agent-by-agent job. I opened a .agent file from my own tenant, and every setting that shapes how the agent behaves has a direct equivalent in a declarative agent manifest, the same format behind an Agent Builder agent. It seems like it would be easy to move them across, but given that SharePoint agents were one of the first agentic experiences available in Microsoft 365, perhaps a fresh start makes more sense, where owners upgrade only what actually gets used rather than carrying the clutter across.
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Frankly, SharePoint agents never really found their place. They were always more limited than Agent Builder agents, and their big advantage was popping up right in the SharePoint UI. A new Agent Chat web part will let site owners put any agent from the plugin store on a page, so that advantage goes away too. And for agents that only answered questions about a site, Copilot in SharePoint already does that job, plus much more.
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As agents and skills come together in one plugin store, perhaps there will be more clarity going forward as to which tool belongs where.
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Are you sad to see the back of SharePoint agents, or does this change make sense for where you are with the tools?
First posted on Linkedin on 10/19/2026 → View Linkedin Post Here