Hi everyone! I'm working on a chatbot in Copilot Studio and looking for a way to remove citations or references (such as PDF links) from its responses. Right now, the chatbot includes source links in its answers, but I’d like to provide clean responses without extra references. Is there a built-in way to do this in Copilot Studio, or would I need to use Power Automate or Expressions? Any guidance, best practices, or workarounds would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I had the same question so I did some digging, and I found this to be the best workaround: Use GenAI Node but: Scroll down to 'Advanced' Uncheck 'Send a Message' under it Change 'Save LLM response' to 'Complete' Set a 'Save bot response as' variable that works for you Add a 'Send a message' node In the text to be sent, add a variable and select this "Topic.YOUR_VARIABLE.Text.Content" The only downside to this is that you can see still the [1], [2] at the end of the text (NO links or mentions of the references however, just plain text of the numbers).

How to Remove Citations and References from Chatbot Responses in Copilot Studio?

Accepted answer

Gerasimos Filippakos 75 Reputation points

2025-03-06T13:54:36.0666667+00:00
I had the same question so I did some digging, and I found this to be the best workaround:

Use GenAI Node but:

Scroll down to 'Advanced'

Uncheck 'Send a Message' under it

Change 'Save LLM response' to 'Complete'

Set a 'Save bot response as' variable that works for you

Add a 'Send a message' node

In the text to be sent, add a variable and select this "Topic.YOUR_VARIABLE.Text.Content"

The only downside to this is that you can see still the [1], [2] at the end of the text (NO links or mentions of the references however, just plain text of the numbers).
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Jeremy Fermin 25 Reputation points

2025-03-06T14:03:45.94+00:00

I actually did the same thing. To remove the citation or reference markers, just customize the message node with this formula:

Substitute(Substitute(Substitute(Topic.YOUR_VARIABLE.Text.Content, "[1]", ""), "[2]", ""), "[3]", "")

This will clean up the response by removing the [1], [2] markers.

Basel Saif 0 Reputation points

2025-03-09T09:42:49.17+00:00

Hey everyone, I have a question. I'm working on this agent and tried adding the 'Send a Message' node after the Condition node and before that, but it didn’t work. I'm not an expert, so I’d really appreciate any help. Thanks in advance!

Gloria Albuquerque-MSFT 10 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff

2025-03-12T02:02:28.89+00:00

Hi Basel,

When you create a topic, a Trigger node automatically appears on the authoring canvas. You can then add different types of nodes to achieve the desired conversation path for your topic.

To add a node after another node or between two nodes on your topic authoring canvas:

Select the Add node icon below the node under which you want to add a new node.

Select the desired node type from the list that appears.

Delete a node

Select the More icon (…) of the node you want to delete, and then select Delete.

Controls for editing nodes on the canvas

You can use controls on the toolbar to cut, copy, paste, and delete the selected node or selected adjacent nodes.

The toolbar also has a control to undo an edit. Open the Undo menu to revert all actions back to the last save or to redo the previous action.

Paste nodes

Once you use the Cut or Copy tools to place one or more nodes on the clipboard, there are two ways to paste them in the canvas:

If you select a node and then select Paste, the nodes on the clipboard are inserted after the selected node.

If you select the "+" to see the Add node menu, then select Paste, the node on the clipboard is inserted at that location.

Add input and output parameters for a topic

Topics can have input and output parameters. When a topic redirects to another topic, you can use these parameters to pass information between the topics.

Additionally, if your agent uses generative mode, it can automatically fill topic inputs from the conversation context, or after generating questions to gather values from users. This behavior is similar to how generative slot filling works for actions.

To learn more about input and output parameters for topics, see Manage topic inputs and outputs.

Design a topic conversation path

When you create a topic, a Trigger node automatically appears on the authoring canvas. You can then add different types of nodes to achieve the desired conversation path for your topic.

To add a node after another node or between two nodes on your topic authoring canvas:

Select the Add node icon below the node under which you want to add a new node.

Select the desired node type from the list that appears.

Please click on the below link for more details :

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot-studio/authoring-create-edit-topics?tabs=webApp

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Basel Saif 0 Reputation points

2025-03-12T10:47:38.41+00:00

Thank you Gloria, this was helpful but I'm looking for removing the citations from the answers the agent provides and i was asking where should i add the

a 'Send a message' node

In the text to be sent, add a variable and select this "Topic.YOUR_VARIABLE.Text.Content"

As i tried to add it before and after the create generative answer node, and didn't work.
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