Copilot in Outlook: Email Summaries and Drafting

Overview

Email remains the primary communication channel for government professionals. Between interagency coordination, program updates, procurement discussions, and leadership briefings, the average government worker spends two to three hours per day on email. Long threads with multiple stakeholders take time to read. Drafting clear, professional responses takes even more time. And the inbox never stops filling up.

Copilot in Outlook addresses this directly. It summarizes long email threads so you can quickly understand what matters, drafts new emails from brief prompts so you are not starting from a blank page, helps you reply with contextual responses, and lets you refine any draft with simple instructions. This video shows you how to use each of these capabilities.

What You’ll Learn

• Summarize: How to get quick summaries of long email threads
• Draft: How to create new emails from brief prompts
• Reply: How to generate contextual responses to incoming emails
• Refine: How to adjust tone, length, and content of Copilot drafts

Script

Hook: Take back your inbox

How much of your day do you spend on email? For most government professionals, the answer is two to three hours—sometimes more. Between reading long threads, drafting responses, writing new messages, and trying to keep up with the constant flow, email can feel like a full-time job on top of your actual job.

What if you could cut that time in half without sacrificing quality? Copilot in Outlook can summarize long email threads so you know what matters in seconds, draft new emails from a short description, help you reply faster with AI-generated responses, and refine any draft until it matches exactly what you want to say.

In the next eight minutes, you will learn how to use every one of these capabilities to take back your inbox.

Prerequisites and where to find Copilot in Outlook

You need a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to use Copilot in Outlook. This is the paid license—these email features are not available with the free Copilot Chat experience.

Copilot in Outlook is available on Windows, Mac, and Outlook on the web. You will find Copilot in two places depending on what you are doing.

When reading emails, look for the “Summary by Copilot” banner that appears at the top of long email threads. This is your entry point for email summarization.

When composing emails, look for the Copilot icon in the email toolbar. This is where you access drafting, replying, and editing features.

For government cloud environments, Copilot in Outlook is fully supported in GCC, GCC High, and DoD. Copilot processes only emails in your mailbox and respects existing permissions and data boundaries. Your email content stays within your organization’s compliance boundary.

Summarizing email threads

Open a long email thread and look for the “Summary by Copilot” banner at the top of the conversation. Click it, and Copilot generates a summary of the entire thread—no matter how many replies it contains.

The summary identifies key points from the discussion, decisions that were made, action items that were assigned, and open questions that remain unresolved. For threads with many replies, Copilot condenses pages of back-and-forth into a concise overview that you can read in under a minute.

You can ask follow-up questions after the summary generates. Try “What was the final decision?” or “What action items were assigned?” or “What did the program manager say about the timeline?” Copilot searches the thread and gives you a specific answer.

This works with both internal and external email threads. So whether you are coordinating with colleagues within your agency or working with an external partner, Copilot can summarize the conversation.

Here is a government scenario. A procurement discussion thread has 15 replies across three different offices over two weeks. Multiple people weighed in on requirements, timelines, and budget constraints. Instead of reading every reply to piece together the current status, click the Copilot summary and get the key decisions and outstanding items in seconds.

Use summaries to triage your inbox more efficiently. Read the Copilot summary first, then decide which emails need your full attention and which ones you can move past. This alone can save 30 minutes per day.

Drafting new emails with Copilot

When you need to write a new email, click “New Email” and then click the Copilot icon in the toolbar. Select “Draft with Copilot” and a prompt box appears.

Describe what you want to say in a brief prompt. For example, “Draft an email to the project team updating them on the Phase 2 timeline change from March to April” or “Write a meeting request for the quarterly security review with IT and compliance leads” or “Compose a follow-up email about the budget submission deadline next Friday.”

Copilot generates a complete draft based on your prompt. The draft includes a subject line, greeting, body content, and closing. You can then adjust the tone—choose from formal, casual, direct, or concise depending on your audience. You can also adjust the length to short, medium, or long.

Always review the draft before sending. Verify that facts, dates, and names are accurate. Copilot generates plausible content, but you are responsible for the final message. If the first draft does not hit the mark, click regenerate for a new version.

Here is a government scenario. You need to send a status update to senior leadership about a cloud modernization initiative. Provide Copilot with the key milestones, current status, and any blockers. Copilot structures a professional, clear email that you can adjust to formal tone and review in a minute. What would have taken 15 minutes of writing takes three minutes of reviewing and editing.

The more specific your prompt, the better the draft. Include the key details you want covered, who the audience is, and what outcome you want from the email.

Replying to emails with Copilot assistance

Replying to emails with Copilot follows a similar flow. Open an email you want to reply to and click Reply. Then click the Copilot icon and select “Draft with Copilot.”

Copilot reads the original email and understands the context. Provide direction for your reply—for example, “Accept the meeting time and confirm our team will attend” or “Decline the request and suggest an alternative date of March 15” or “Acknowledge the update and ask about the impact on our timeline.”

Copilot generates a reply that incorporates context from the original email. It references specific points the sender raised and addresses them in your response. This saves you from re-reading the original email multiple times to make sure your reply covers everything.

Review the reply for accuracy, especially names, dates, and any commitments you are making. Edit as needed—add specifics that only you know, adjust the tone, or remove content that is not relevant.

Here is a practical example. You receive a lengthy email from another agency requesting your team’s participation in interoperability testing. The email includes background, proposed dates, and technical requirements. Ask Copilot to draft a reply that agrees to participate, confirms your team’s availability, and asks for the detailed testing schedule. You have a professional reply ready in 30 seconds instead of 10 minutes.

Editing and refining Copilot drafts

After Copilot generates any draft—whether a new email or a reply—you have several options for refining it. Type instructions like “Make it shorter” or “Make it longer” to adjust length. Use “Make it more formal” or “Make it more casual” to shift the tone. Try “Make it more direct” to cut unnecessary pleasantries. Or get specific with “Add a bullet list of the key dates” to restructure the content.

You can iterate through multiple rounds of refinement until the draft matches your intent. You can also manually edit the text directly at any point—Copilot and manual editing work together.

The best practice is to use Copilot for the first draft and overall structure, then add your personal touch and specific details. Think of Copilot as a starting point, not a final product.

For government professionals, this is especially important. Always review AI-generated content for accuracy regarding policy references, regulatory citations, dates, and commitments. You sign off on the email, so make sure every detail is correct.

Close: Email faster, communicate better

Let us recap the four ways Copilot transforms your Outlook experience. Summarize—condense long threads into key points, decisions, and action items. Draft—create new emails from brief prompts with professional structure. Reply—generate contextual responses that reference the original message. Refine—adjust tone, length, and content with simple follow-up instructions.

Here is what to do next. Open your longest unread email thread and try a Copilot summary. Then draft one new email using Copilot today—give it a specific prompt and see what it produces. Finally, reply to an email with Copilot assistance and compare the experience to your usual approach.

Copilot handles the first draft so you can focus on the final word. Start using it today.

Sources & References

• Draft an email message with Copilot in Outlook — Step-by-step guide for drafting emails with Copilot
• Copilot in Outlook — Official documentation for Copilot features in Outlook
• Summarize an email thread with Copilot in Outlook — Guide for email thread summarization
• Copilot adoption for GCC — Government cloud adoption resources and feature availability