Artificial Intelligence, Center For Practice Management, Email Management, Microsoft Office, Productivity

Microsoft Copilot in Outlook

March 25, 2025

Microsoft offers an artificial intelligence-based add-on for the MS 365 suite called Copilot for 365. While they do offer a free version of Copilot, the add-on costs an additional $30 per user per month and it is embedded in the entire suite, including Outlook. What can the Copilot add-in do to help manage your Outlook emails, calendar and more?

Email Drafting

Need help drafting a difficult email or a response? Copilot for 365 excels in this pursuit. You can get help responding to an email, draft a new email, or create an announcement.

To respond to a message with help from Copilot you can respond to an email and click the floating Copilot icon. It will ask you how you want to respond, like “thanks for the reminder”. Then it will draft an email addressed to the sender “Dear []” and add text and a salutation. Then it provides options to keep the message, discard it, or refine it by making it shorter, longer, or changing the tone. You can find further suggested prompts like “simplify” or “add more detail”. Once you are finished click “keep it” and send away.

To create a new email, you can start an email and follow the prompts tell Copilot what you want to draft. For instance, “draft an email asking that a person respond to previous emails and voicemails. Be firm but professional.” You can modify the content with prompts to make it longer or shorter, adjust the tone, clarify purpose or intent, add more detail and other options.

You can also draft an email that pulls in content from your existing documents and emails you have sent. For instance, in the body of an email click the / and Copilot will identify recent files. You can choose the file to attach and then prompt Copilot to summarize the document. You can add the summary to the email and attach the document.

Getting Copilot to help draft emails and responses can be helpful because it fills in details, repeats pertinent information from the original message thread, and neutralizes any language that may be misinterpreted.

Get Prepared for A Meeting

Open the Copilot panel and type in something like “help me prepare for events and appointments on my calendar for Thursday”. It will give you a summary of the meetings you have for that day in your calendar, including times, participants, who scheduled the meeting and a little about the content. You can further query the summary by asking “Can you show me emails from [participant} to help prepare for Thursday’s meeting?”. Then prompt “prepare a draft agenda for Thursday’s meeting”. Copilot will continue to suggest prompts. Be aware, content may be incorrect and that sometimes Copilot will suggest a prompt and then tell you it can’t actually perform the action yet.

Catch Up on Unread Emails or Action Items

Ask Copilot in Outlook “Are there any emails in my inbox from the last weekend that I haven’t responded to or that need my attentions?” Copilot will summarize emails from that time. You can also prompt “are there any emails in my inbox that need a response?”. Copilot will summarize messages in your inbox and summarize items it thinks you need to respond to and link you to the original email. You can then use Copilot to draft responses to outstanding requests.

Summarize Messages

At the top of each email message there is a prompt to summarize the message. You can further prompt Copilot in the summary to help you respond.

To summarize multiple messages, open the Copilot window. Type a prompt like “summarize all messages from [person] and note any outstanding items I may need to respond to”. Copilot will scour your inbox and folders, as well as Teams to unearth recent discussions. The summary includes links you can click on links to open the reference emails or attachments.

Find a File

Type “find files from [person] related to [topic]” for a quick way to find attachments. You can also find all files from a specific person. The AI provides follow up prompt suggestions like “show me the contents of the X file” or “what topics were covered in the x document” to dig further into the results.

Take Action

You can prompt to “schedule a meeting with [person] on [date] at [time] regarding [topic]. If the person is in your firm or organization Copilot will confirm their availability based on their schedule.

Conclusion

Copilot in Outlook can be very useful, but it is not agentic. It can summarize, draft responses, find information, and identify action items but it cannot move emails to folders (despite a suggested prompt) or act on your behalf. This is still early days for the Copilot for 365 AI and as always, you should check the work. But, to sift through email and upcoming meetings, summarize email threads, and suggest draft language for difficult email messages, Copilot in Outlook is a great time saver.