How to use Copilot in Outlook to get two hours back every week

A Brisbane accountant we work with spent the first forty minutes of every morning catching up on email. Scrolling, skimming, re-reading threads to find the one thing she actually needed. She had Microsoft 365 Copilot in her licence but had never touched the Outlook features. Once she did, that morning ritual shrank to under ten minutes.

That’s not an unusual result. Email is one of the biggest time drains in a working day, and most of the time is wasted on the reading and composing overhead, not the actual decisions. Copilot in Outlook targets that overhead directly. Here’s how to put it to work.

What Copilot in Outlook actually does

Copilot sits inside Outlook as a set of practical tools, not a chatbot you have to coax. The four you’ll use most are:

• Summarise. Reads a long email thread and gives you the key decisions, open questions, and action items in a few bullet points.
• Draft with Copilot. Writes a full email or reply from a short prompt you give it. You review and edit before sending.
• Coaching by Copilot. Reviews a draft you’ve written and suggests improvements to tone, clarity, and how the reader might interpret it.
• Prioritise my inbox. Scans arriving emails and labels them high, normal, or low priority, with a short reason for each.

Each feature is available from the Copilot button in the Outlook toolbar. You don’t need to leave Outlook or switch apps. The panel opens alongside your inbox, so you keep your context while you work.

Summarise long threads in seconds

Open any thread and select “Summary by Copilot” (or “Summarise”) at the top of the conversation. Copilot scans the entire thread, pulls out the key points, and presents a short summary with numbered citations. Each citation links directly to the message it came from, so you can verify anything in one click.

This is where most people save the most time. A fifteen-email thread that would take eight minutes to read becomes a ninety-second summary. The summary shows who said what, what was agreed, and what’s still open. For anyone who joins a thread late, or returns from leave to a full inbox, this alone is worth the licence.

If the email has attachments, a PDF, a Word document, a PowerPoint deck, you can ask Copilot to summarise the file too. No more opening separate documents to understand context that should have been in the email body.

Draft replies without starting from scratch

Composing a reply from a blank screen is surprisingly slow. Even a short email can take five minutes once you factor in word choice, tone decisions, and getting the opening line right. Copilot removes that friction.

In new Outlook, select “Help me reply” on the email canvas. Tell Copilot what you want to say in plain language, a sentence or two is enough. It writes the full reply. You can then adjust the tone (more formal, shorter, friendlier), ask it to regenerate, or edit the draft directly. Once you’re happy, you send it. Copilot never sends on your behalf, every message leaves only after you review it.

A useful prompt pattern: “Draft a reply confirming we’ll have the proposal ready by Thursday. Keep it under three sentences, professional tone.” Copilot will produce something close to final. Most users make a small edit and send. The time saving over a week adds up fast.

From April 2026, Copilot in Outlook also writes the first draft directly in the email canvas and asks clarifying questions as it goes, refining the message based on your responses without any copy-pasting. It’s a smoother back-and-forth than earlier versions.

Get coaching on emails you’ve already written

Sometimes the problem isn’t speed, it’s confidence. You’ve written the email, but you’re not sure if the tone lands the right way with this particular recipient. Coaching by Copilot reviews your draft and gives specific suggestions: “this sentence may read as blunt”, “consider softening the opening”, “the request isn’t clearly stated until the third paragraph.”

You can apply all suggestions at once or pick through them individually. Copilot rewrites those sections and you keep the rest. It’s particularly useful for sensitive conversations, a complaint response, a request to a difficult client, a message to a senior stakeholder where phrasing matters.

To use it: write your email, select the Copilot icon in the toolbar, choose “Coaching by Copilot”, and review the suggestions. If you’re happy, click “Apply all suggestions” and Copilot regenerates the message.

Let Copilot sort your inbox for you

Copilot can scan incoming messages and assign a priority to each one, with a brief note explaining why it flagged it that way. A message from a client asking for a decision is marked high. A newsletter is marked low. You can also customise the priority settings to tell Copilot which topics or senders should always be flagged as important.

This pairs well with the triage actions now available in Outlook: pin, flag, archive, delete, or mark as read, all from a single view. The goal is to get in, handle what matters, and get out. No more reading twenty messages to find the two that needed a response.

Copilot Chat in Outlook also now reasons across your entire inbox and calendar. You can ask questions like “What’s outstanding from last week’s project thread?” or “Summarise everything from the Smith account this month”, and get a coherent answer without manually hunting through folders.

A realistic picture of what changes

Two hours a week is achievable, but it requires building a few habits. The time saving doesn’t happen automatically just because Copilot is turned on.

Here’s where the time actually comes from:

• Thread catch-up: Using Summarise consistently on any thread longer than five messages. Saves 3-5 minutes per thread.
• Draft generation: Using “Help me reply” for any reply that isn’t a quick one-liner. Saves 3-8 minutes per message.
• Inbox triage: Using priority labelling to work through emails in order of importance, not arrival. Reduces re-reading and second-guessing.
• Coaching: Using it on two or three messages a week where tone is important. Saves the back-and-forth of asking a colleague to read it first.

Across a working week, users who build these habits consistently tend to save 90 minutes to two and a half hours. The ceiling depends on how email-heavy the role is.

One thing worth saying clearly: Copilot doesn’t replace your judgment. It produces drafts, not finished correspondence. You still read, edit, and decide before anything leaves your inbox. Think of it as a skilled first drafter who works at speed, you’re still the author.

What licence do you need?

The core Summarise and Draft features in Outlook are part of Microsoft 365 plans with the Copilot add-on licence. Inbox prioritisation and Copilot Chat across your full inbox require a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. If you’re unsure what’s included in your current plan, your IT team or Microsoft partner can check in a few minutes.

Not yet on Microsoft 365? That’s the starting point. You can review your options for Microsoft 365 for your business or talk to us about what plan fits your team size and budget.

If you’re already paying for Copilot licences and your team isn’t using the Outlook features, that’s the quick win right now. Training people on Summarise and Draft takes about twenty minutes. The habit builds from there.

Frequently asked questions

Does Copilot send emails on my behalf?

No. Copilot drafts and suggests, it never sends. Every message leaves your inbox only after you review and click Send. You stay in control of every communication.

Is Copilot in Outlook available on mobile?

Yes. Summarise and Draft with Copilot work on Outlook for iOS and Android. The Copilot Chat experience on mobile has also been updated with a cleaner interface, making it easier to use on the go.

Will Copilot read confidential emails?

Copilot in Outlook works within your existing Microsoft 365 security and permissions. It only accesses data your account can already access. Microsoft’s Trust Center outlines how data is handled, and Copilot doesn’t use your email content to train external AI models.

What if the draft doesn’t sound like me?

Edit it. The draft is a starting point, not a final product. Over time, giving Copilot specific guidance in your prompts, preferred tone, typical sign-offs, phrases you like, produces drafts closer to your natural style. Some users keep a short prompt template they paste in to get consistent results.

Do I need IT to set it up?

If you have a qualifying Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, it should appear in Outlook without extra setup. If you can’t see the Copilot button in your toolbar, your IT admin may need to enable it at the tenant level. Your managed services partner can sort this quickly.

Where do we get started?

Talk to us. We help Queensland businesses get practical use out of their Microsoft 365 licences, including rolling out Copilot features to the people who’ll actually use them. Get in touch and we can check what’s already in your plan and where the quick wins are.