Can Copilot tame your Outlook Inbox?

by | Jul 14, 2025 | AI, IT News & Insights New Zealand | Cybersecurity, AI & Microsoft Updates, TIPS TRICKS AND HINTS

Is your email inbox overflowing?

You’re not alone. Managing a busy inbox can be time-consuming and draining. The average professional deals with around 100+ emails a day, and over half of those could be spam or trivial notifications2. Every new email interrupting your work can break your focus – studies show it might take about 20 minutes to refocus after checking an email. No wonder we often feel overwhelmed by our inboxes.

Avg. Daily Work Emails

126

Average number of business emails a person handles per day.

Spam/Noise Proportion

50%+

Over half of daily emails are spam or low-priority noise.

Refocus Time

20 min

Time it can take to refocus after an email interruption.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is here to help. 

Copilot acts like an AI email assistant in Outlook that can prioritise, sort, summarise, and even draft responses for your emails. By handling the grunt work of email management, Copilot frees you up to focus on more important tasks. It’s basically your own personal assistant who previews your inbox and flags what matters most

You can simply tell Copilot what you need in everyday language – no special technical commands. Just type requests as if you’re talking to a colleague.

🔑 Be Specific in Prompts

Clear, detailed instructions yield better results. Specify who or what to focus on, and Copilot will be more precise (e.g. “emails from my manager”).

⭐ Mark What Matters

Flag or categorise important emails (like your boss’s messages). This lets Copilot know which conversations are high priority and ensures they stand out in your inbox.

Below are 10 Copilot prompts for Outlook Email

These will help you get an out-of-control inbox back under control. Each prompt is a plain-English command you give to Copilot, and Copilot will handle the rest.

These examples show how you can use Copilot to automate sorting, highlight urgent emails, summarise long threads, find info, and draft replies – all to tame your inbox and save you time.

1. “Organise my inbox” – Let Copilot Sort Your Emails

When your inbox is a mess, start by asking Copilot to organise it. Just click the Copilot icon in Outlook and say, “Organise my inbox.” Copilot will ask how you’d like things sorted, then create Outlook rules for you automatically.  For example, you might tell it: “Create an inbox rule to categorise all emails from [Your Boss] as blue.” Copilot will bring up Outlook’s rule settings already filled out with that instruction. Once you confirm, all future emails from that person get tagged blue (and/or moved to a folder) instantly.

What used to be a fiddly manual task – making email rules – is now as easy as chatting. One Microsoft blogger admitted, “I used to find creating rules a bit of a chore, but that has since changed”.
You can set up multiple rules this way. Rinse and repeat, and soon you’ll have the organised inbox of your dreams (if that’s what you dream about!) where newsletters, alerts, and team emails all go to their proper places automatically.

2. “Prioritise my inbox” – See Important Emails First

After sorting the chaos, you’ll want to surface your most important emails. Copilot’s “Prioritize My Inbox” feature helps you focus on high-impact messages by intelligently bubbling them to the top of your inbox.
To use it, click the Copilot icon and choose “Prioritize,” then describe what “important” means for you. For example, tell Copilot: “Emails from my manager and key clients are high priority.” Using such prompts, Copilot will adjust your inbox view so those emails appear first. It looks at your past behaviour and organizational context to learn what matters to you, instead of relying on static rules.
Essentially, Copilot learns from how you work and adapts accordingly. The result? It’s almost like having an assistant who sorts your mail – critical messages greet you up front, while less urgent ones stay out of your way. Microsoft’s internal teams testing this feature say it “increases your responsiveness” and even reduces the stress of a huge unread inbox. In short, you get to focus on what’s truly important without manually filtering anything.

3. “Catch me up on emails from <timeframe>” – Get a Quick Digest

When you’ve been away from email for a while – maybe back-to-back meetings, or coming back from a day off – Copilot can summarise what you missed. Simply ask, “Catch me up on emails from this morning” (or “…from yesterday/last week”, etc.). Copilot will scan the emails in that timeframe and give you a brief digest, often grouping them by topic or sender.
Instead of wading through dozens of messages, you’ll see at a glance things like: “Project Zeus: 4 emails, mainly discussing timeline changes. Finance: 2 emails, monthly report attached. HR: 3 emails, reminder about training next week.” In one go, you get the gist of multiple emails, making it easy to decide which threads to open first.
This prompt is a lifesaver on days when your inbox is bursting at the seams with unread mail. It’s like getting a personal briefing on your email, so you can catch up in minutes rather than hours.

4. “Do I have any urgent emails?” – Find Time-Sensitive Messages

On hectic days, you might only have bandwidth for truly urgent matters. Copilot can quickly flag if there’s anything in your inbox that needs immediate attention.
Just ask, “Do I have any urgent emails right now?” Copilot will analyze your recent messages and highlight those that appear time-sensitive – for example, emails marked as High Importance, or from VIP senders, or that contain words like “urgent” or “ASAP.” It uses context from your organization to judge what’s critical. Copilot might respond with something like: “You have 2 urgent emails: one from CEO Jane about an end-of-day report, and one from Client X asking for a status update.” 
This way, even if you have 100 unread messages, Copilot ensures no critical request gets buried. In practice, it’s much more efficient than manually scanning subject lines for red exclamation marks. You can immediately focus on those pressing emails and come back to the routine ones later. (Pro tip: as mentioned above, flagging important contacts or messages helps Copilot know what you consider urgent.

5. “Summarise this email thread” – Understand Long Conversations Fast

We’ve all seen those email threads that go back and forth endlessly. Instead of reading through a lengthy chain of replies, let Copilot give you the highlights.
When you’re looking at a long email conversation, prompt “Summarise this thread.” Copilot will read the entire thread and produce a concise summary of the key points and any decisions or action items. For example, if a dozen emails discuss a project update, Copilot might summarise: “The team agreed to push the deadline to Q4. John raised a budget concern – will review figures next meeting. Alice confirmed the client approved the new design. Next step: engineering sign-off.” 
Along with the summary, Copilot often provides references (with links) to specific emails in case you want more detail. In other words, you get a quick understanding of the whole discussion without reading every message, and you can click into the exact email that had info you care about.
This saves you from losing time in massive threads while still keeping you informed. As one user put it, having Copilot draft summaries “saves an underrated amount of time” and makes it much easier to stay on top of email conversations.

6. Draft Responses in Seconds

Prompt: “Copilot, draft a reply to thank for the update and confirm our meeting on Monday.” We all know the pain of crafting polite, timely responses when our brainpower is low or our schedule is packed.

Copilot can take a huge load off by writing initial drafts of emails for you. If you give it a simple instruction like the prompt above, it will generate a professional-sounding reply in moments. For example, Copilot might produce: “Hi , thanks for the update. I appreciate the information and I’ll be ready to discuss this further in our meeting on Monday. See you then!” You can review and tweak this draft as needed, but most of the work (tone, structure, courtesy) is done. Whether it’s routine acknowledgments, meeting confirmations, or even more detailed emails (just provide the key points you want to include), Copilot’s drafting saves you time. It ensures you maintain a responsive communication style without having to start from scratch every time. In a busy day, that’s an email-writing superpower.  

7. Schedule Focused “Email Time” on Your Calendar

Prompt: “Copilot, schedule a 30-minute Email Cleanup session on my calendar every weekday at 4 PM.” One secret to inbox sanity is not living in your email all day. Productivity experts suggest batching your email handling into dedicated time slots.

Copilot can help by actually blocking that time out for you. If you tell Copilot to schedule daily or weekly “email focus” periods, it will create events on your Outlook calendar (just like scheduling a meeting) so that you—and even your colleagues—know you’re busy catching up on emails. For instance, you can have Copilot set a recurring 4:00–4:30 PM “Email Time” every workday. During these periods, turn off other distractions and let email be your sole focus. Using Copilot during this time can further streamline the process: have it summarize new messages or list pending replies as your starting point. By sticking to these scheduled email bursts instead of constant checking, you reduce distraction and regain control of your workday.  Copilot simply makes setting up that routine one step easier (and harder to ignore!).  

8. Set Follow-Up Reminders

Prompt: “Copilot, remind me to follow up on that client email next Friday.” Important emails often come with promised follow-ups or tasks. Rather than flagging a message and hoping you’ll remember it, let Copilot proactively create a reminder for you. With a quick prompt, Copilot can mark a date in your Outlook task list or calendar to nudge you about the specific email or thread.

For example, if you tell Copilot “Remind me to follow up on this by next Friday,” it will add a reminder or task linked to that email. Come Friday, you’ll get an alert: “Don’t forget to reply to John’s question on Project X.”

This feature ensures nothing critical slips through the cracks of a hectic inbox. It’s like having an invisible personal assistant who notes: “We need to get back to them on this.” Using Copilot for follow-ups means you can archive or snooze the email for now, confident that it won’t be forgotten. It’s peace of mind that every to-do triggered by an email is captured and you’ll be prompted at the right time.  

9. Archive or Delete Old Clutter in Bulk

Prompt: “Copilot, archive all emails in my inbox older than 6 months (except those marked Important).” A major source of inbox overload is old stuff – messages that have served their purpose but are still sitting around. Copilot can help you declutter in one sweep. Rather than manually sorting by date and selecting hundreds of emails, just ask Copilot to do it.

For instance, you could say: “Archive all emails from before January 1, 2025.” If you need more precision, you can include criteria: “…that are from newsletters” or “…that have attachments,” etc. Copilot will identify those messages and archive them (which moves them out of your main inbox into the Archive folder) or delete them, as instructed. Microsoft’s Copilot guidance gives an example: “Archive all emails more than six months old with ‘Project X’ in the subject line.” – which Copilot can execute in one go.

By regularly purging old emails, you’ll trim down that inbox count dramatically and improve search speed. Plus, it just feels good to know the ancient history is filed away. Copilot makes large-scale cleanups easy – no more excuses for thousands of lingering messages!  

10. Manage Newsletters and Unwanted Subscriptions

Prompt: “Copilot, find all newsletter emails and help me unsubscribe or file them away.” Newsletters, marketing emails, and other subscription messages (sometimes called “bacn”) can clutter any business inbox. Copilot can assist in taming this semi-spam.

First, you might use a prompt to identify or move them: “Move all emails with an ‘Unsubscribe’ link to my Newsletters folder.” This uses Copilot to instantly sweep those mass emails out of sight (based on the common “Unsubscribe” keyword). You can then review that folder occasionally instead of constantly mixing these with important mail. Additionally, Copilot can help you act on them: you might ask it to draft unsubscribe requests for lists you no longer find valuable, or at least list out all the senders so you can unsubscribe with one click each.

While Copilot can’t magically force all senders to stop, it significantly decreases the manual effort by surfacing bulk emails in one group. As a result, your main inbox is freed from the onslaught of promotional content.  Over time, you’ll notice far fewer distractions – only the communications that matter to your work will remain front-and-center.  

Final Thought

Your inbox doesn’t have to be a source of stress. With Copilot, you can take control using plain-English prompts that work across Outlook, Teams, and more. Try these tips today—your future self will thank you!