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File Upload in published Agents not working

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Posted on by MichaelHeim

Hi everyone,

I’m currently facing an issue where the file upload in a Copilot agent works through a question, but the file is not passed to the next step. After the upload, the bot immediately responds with

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t answer that. Is there something else I can help you with?”

In the question, I store the file in a variable and want to reuse this data (content, name), for example by passing it to a Power Automate flow.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far

Directly storing it in a variable, then accessing Topic.VarFileUpload.Content

Or using the system environment First(System.Activity.Attachments)

but no matter which method I use, the bot always gives the same response.

In the settings, orchestration for generative AI and file upload is enabled.

The function works without any issues inside Copilot Studio, but it does not work when using the shared agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot in the browser.

Does anyone have an idea what might be causing this?

Thanks and regards,

Micha

2026-01-16 11_28_...

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Copilot Studio skills development

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Valantis 1,514 on at

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Hi @MichaelHeim,

File upload works in test chat but fails after publishing because the Microsoft 365 Copilot channel doesn't support file attachments for Copilot Studio agents.

You got the following options:

Switch to Teams where file upload actually works. Use a Question node with Identify = File, enable "Include file metadata", and pass it to Power Automate using: {contentBytes: Topic.<FileVar>.Content, name: Topic.<FileVar>.Name}

Stay in M365 Copilot but change the UX: ask users to paste a OneDrive or SharePoint link to the file instead of uploading. Your flow fetches the file from the link.

There's no way to make direct file upload work in M365 Copilot. It's an unsupported message type in that channel.

Quick question: are you locked into M365 Copilot, or can your users access the agent through Teams instead?

Let me know if that helps you :)

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MichaelHeim 11 on at

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Hi @Valantis,

Thank you very much for your quick reply.

I tested it in a Teams chat, and it works there with Topic.<FileVar>.

I also received a message asking me to accept the Azure AI Service, and some connections were no longer valid. Is there any way to make this more user‑friendly?

Thanks and regards

Michael

2026-01-18 09_05_...
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