Q&A Assist Answers Considered Harmful

Hornblower409 14,600 Reputation points
2026-05-15T13:50:43.68+00:00

I realize that this is probably a fool's errand but I will continue to report on problems with the Q&A Assist Answers until someone realizes that they could be causing more harm than good.

Most recent example:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5890544/lag-in-displaying-text-when-typing-in-outlook-clas

The Q&A Assist Answer gave the user a totally misleading answer about how to fix a problem that was reported and corrected in 2025. Without any instructions on how to determine if the answer was applicable to the current version. If the user had actually tried to perform the fix they would been in more trouble than when they started.

What I don't understand is that - If I take the original question plus the question tags and feed them straight into Copilot I usually get at least a reasonable answer. With notes to help the user decide if the solutions are appropriate for their situation. Plus it allows the user to modify or add to their original question to narrow down the possible solutions.

Can't we just have Q&A Assist replaced by Copilot? It couldn't be any worse.

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  1. Erland Sommarskog 137.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2026-05-16T12:40:51.5233333+00:00

    I cannot speak for Q&A Assist as such, but since you called out the answer from Q&A Assist in the above thread as incorrect, I have deleted that post.

    Generally, I would recommend that if you come across an answer from Q&A Assist which you find to be off the mark, you should report it. Use the option Other Terms of Code of Conduct Violation and briefly explain what's wrong. The moderator who sees the report may not have expertise in the subject area for the topic in question to make a judgement of its own. (Unfortunately, there is a strange issue in the moderator tools, so we only see reported posts from Q&A assist only if there are reports about posts from other users. I asked Microsoft why it is this way.)

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