How to Use Copilot in Outlook Step by Step: Summary, Drafting and Coaching

Copilot in Outlook can summarise a long thread, draft a reply from a short prompt, and coach an email you wrote yourself — if your account is eligible.

You know the feeling. It is Monday morning, the coffee has barely had time to work, and your inbox is already full. Worse, the message at the top is not one message at all: it is a thread of twelve replies, three forwards and a decision buried in the middle that everyone assumes you have read. You scroll, lose your place, scroll again — and ten minutes vanish before you have answered a single thing.

That is exactly the problem Copilot in Outlook is built for. It will not clear your inbox for you, but it can do three practical jobs: summarise a thread, draft an email from a short instruction, and coach a message you have written yourself. This guide walks through each job using only the steps Microsoft documents in its Support pages. Comparing tools first? Our pillar guide to AI email assistants in Gmail and Outlook explains where each one fits.

Check your account first: not every Outlook account gets Copilot

Eligibility depends on the address behind your account, not just on using Outlook.

Before you hunt for buttons that may not be there, check your account. Microsoft Support says Copilot in Outlook only supports work or school accounts, and Microsoft accounts using an outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com or msn.com address.

One catch catches plenty of people out. A Microsoft account using a third-party address — Gmail, Yahoo or iCloud, for example — can use Outlook, but will not have access to Copilot features in Outlook. So if the Copilot icon never appears, your account type may be the reason. This guide notes both Outlook labels wherever they differ.

Summarise a long thread in two clicks instead of reading every reply

Summary by Copilot scans the thread and puts key points at the top.

This is the feature most people will use first. When a thread has grown long and tangled, you need the shape of the conversation — who decided what, who is waiting on whom — before you dive into detail.

1. Select a conversation from your inbox.
2. Select the “Summary by Copilot” box at the top of the thread in the new Outlook, or select “Summarize” in classic Outlook.

Copilot then scans the thread for key points and creates a summary, shown at the top of the email. The summary may include numbered citations that, when selected, take you to the corresponding email in the thread. That matters: a summary you can check is useful; one you must take on faith is a risk. Spot-check the points you are about to act on, especially dates, names and commitments.

Draft an email from one short prompt instead of a blank page

Draft with Copilot turns a plain instruction into a full, adjustable message.

The blank email window is its own kind of dread: you know what needs saying, but the first sentence will not come. Drafting flips the job around — you give Copilot a plain-language instruction, it writes the first version, and you edit something real.

1. Go to Home, then select New Mail.
2. Select the Copilot icon in the toolbar, then “Draft” (new Outlook) or “Draft with Copilot” (classic Outlook).
3. In the Copilot box, type your prompt. Microsoft’s own example is: “Let the team know we decided to use clay shingles and to go ahead so we meet the deadline.”
4. Select Generate — an arrow button in the new Outlook.
5. To change length or tone, use “Make it shorter”, “Make it longer” or “Change Tone” in the new Outlook, or “Adjust” in classic Outlook.
6. If the draft is not right, select Retry (new Outlook) or Regenerate (classic Outlook), or edit your prompt and Generate again.
7. When satisfied, select “Keep it” or “Keep”, edit as needed, then Send.

Nothing is sent until you keep the draft and press Send yourself. A vague prompt gets a vague draft, so include the decision, audience and deadline, as Microsoft’s example does. Gmail user at home? See how to use Gemini in Gmail step by step.

Get coaching on your own email before you press send

Coaching by Copilot reviews your words for tone, clarity and reader sentiment.

Drafting is not always what you want. Sometimes the email is sensitive or simply yours, and you would rather write it yourself — but still welcome a second pair of eyes. You write first; Copilot reviews.

1. Go to Home > New Mail > Mail, and type your email message yourself first.
2. Select the Copilot icon, then choose “Coaching by Copilot”.
3. Copilot reviews the email and offers suggestions on tone, clarity and reader sentiment.
4. Select “Apply all suggestions” to regenerate the email text with the improvements, or incorporate suggestions individually and manually.
5. Send when you are satisfied.

That choice — apply everything, or pick suggestion by suggestion — is the heart of this feature. Tone suggestions are opinions, not corrections, and a “clearer” version can sand away warmth you added on purpose. If a change alters your meaning, keep your original words.

Turn a thread into a meeting with Schedule with Copilot

In the new Outlook, one option builds the invitation from the thread.

One more trick from the same Welcome page: in the new Outlook, “Schedule with Copilot” creates a meeting invitation from an email thread — title and agenda filled in, the thread added as an attachment, and the thread’s participants included as attendees.

As ever, review before you send: check the title, agenda and attendees first.

What this means

The real change is that you review and steer, instead of writing everything from a blank page.

The honest shift is this. Email work used to mean writing: open a blank window, compose, send. Copilot changes your job from writer to editor. Summaries ask you to verify rather than read everything. Drafts ask you to steer rather than compose. Coaching asks you to judge suggestions rather than spot awkward sentences. In a busy week, that is the difference between an inbox that drains your morning and one you can move through.

That editing role only works if you build the checking habit. Microsoft says plainly that Copilot leverages GPT and may create unexpected or inaccurate content, and that warning deserves better than a skim. A summary can drop the one reply that changed the decision. A draft can state a date or promise you never made. Citations exist so you can jump back to the source email, and the Keep steps exist so a draft passes through your hands first. In our view, the healthiest routine is simple: let Copilot do the heavy lifting, then spend the time saved on one careful read of anything carrying a fact or commitment.

The subtler risk arrives after the early successes. At first, most people check everything, because the tool is new. Then the summaries prove accurate, the drafts come out clean, and the checking quietly stops. That is exactly when an error slips through — not because the tool got worse, but because your guard dropped. If a claim matters, verify it against the original message, as in our checklist for fact-checking AI answers. Trust earned feature by feature is fine. Blind trust is not a workflow.

There is something genuinely kind here, too. Much inbox stress is not volume; it is uncertainty — not knowing what a thread decided, or whether your reply sounds sharper than you feel. A summary showing a conversation’s shape, and a coach flagging a sentence likely to land badly, lower that uncertainty. Used with your eyes open, Copilot does not make email effortless. It makes it calmer — a real improvement.

Bottom line

Start with summaries, add drafting, and keep coaching for messages that matter.

If your account is eligible, begin with summaries on your longest threads — the fastest win, and the easiest to verify. Add drafting for routine updates, and keep coaching for emails where tone matters. Above all, review everything before it leaves your outbox.

Related guides

Read next:

• AI Email Assistants Explained: Gmail and Outlook
• How to Use Gemini in Gmail Step by Step
• How to Check AI Answers: A Fact-Checking Checklist

Sources

• Microsoft Support — Welcome to Copilot in Outlook
• Microsoft Support — Get email coaching with Copilot in Outlook