Frequently asked questions about Copilot in Outlook

Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with Outlook data to help you stay productive in the workplace. 

Summarize: Quickly extracts key points from email threads.

Draft with Copilot: Generates full-length email drafts from prompts based on thread context and organizational information. Just type /, select Draft with Copilot, and enter your prompt in the dialog box.

Coaching by Copilot: Provides feedback on email drafts by suggesting improvements on tone, sentiment, and clarity. 

Chat with Copilot: Have conversations about information that's specific to your organization and information available on the web. The Copilot window opens beside the existing Outlook window, so you can interact and chat with Copilot while continuing to use Outlook. This option is only available for businesses with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscription.

These features are not supported on signed or encrypted emails, on emails with IRM, and some MIP labeled emails. For a comprehensive guide on using Copilot in Outlook, please see Welcome to Copilot in Outlook. 

Summary by Copilot is available via the Summarize button at the top of each message thread.

Draft with Copilot and Coaching by Copilot are available from the Copilot button on the ribbon when you're drafting a message.

Chat with Copilot is available when you select the Copilot icon from the navigation header. This option is only available for businesses with a Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscription. Login with your Microsoft account or visit Where can I get Microsoft Copilot? to learn more.

Copilot scenarios in Outlook are only available on a user’s primary mailbox. They are not available on a user’s archive mailbox, group mailboxes, or shared and delegate mailboxes that they have access to. Copilot scenarios are not supported on mailboxes that are not hosted on Exchange Online. 

Copilot scenarios in Outlook cannot access encrypted emails. Support is coming soon for Microsoft 365 Message Encryption emails for which the ExtractAllowed property is set to true. Other encryption methods like S/MIME or Double Key Encryption will not be supported by Copilot scenarios.

Chatting with Copilot in Outlook is only available if you’re using a work or school account and you’re using new Outlook for Windows or Outlook on the web. Currently, the Copilot chat experience doesn’t have context for anything you might select in the Outlook reading pane, nor can it search or extract information from specific Outlook folders.

For Draft with Copilot, you can choose what tone and length settings Copilot uses to generate content. See more about how to Draft an email message with Copilot in Outlook. 

Eligible users of Microsoft Copilot for Sales can bring relevant information from their CRM or ERP tools while summarizing and drafting emails. In Outlook Web and the New Outlook for Windows, you will see a dropdown in the Draft with Copilot and Summary by Copilot experiences to enable this sales focus. The sales focus will be the default for emails with external recipients.