Find Emails with Copilot Search in Outlook

Transcript

If you've ever struggled to find your emails in Outlook using the search bar, then this video is for you because now we can use Copilot to perform specific searches. Let's say I need to find an email that I know was sent by cellmates training in October. We can open up Copilot chat and in the prompt area.

I'm gonna type find emails from Cellmates training in the training sub folder between the first of the first 2024 and the 31st of the 10th, 2024. You can see that Copilot returns a summary of each email that it finds, and it's done it in just a few seconds. Maybe this time I want to find an email attachment that my colleague sent me last week.

So I'm gonna type in the prompt, find the file Harry emailed me last week, and there you go once again, in a matter of seconds I have that information. So finding emails has never been simpler with Copilot chat. And if you are one of those people that gets really frustrated with the Outlook search bar, why not give this a try instead?

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If you’ve ever been frustrated with Outlook’s search bar, typing in keywords, changing filters, and still not finding the email you need, you’re not alone.With Copilot Chat, you can simply describe what you're looking for and Copilot will do the searching for you

How?

In Outlook, go to the Home tab and click the Copilot icon, then choose Chat
In the prompt box, type what you’re looking for in natural language (e.g., “Find…” or “Show me…”).
Copilot returns a summary of results directly in the chat window. Review and open the emails or attachments you need

How do you access Copilot Chat in Outlook?

Click the Copilot icon on the Home tab, then select Chat

Open Outlook Settings and search for “AI Search”

Right-click an email and choose “Find Similar”

Go to the View tab and select Smart Search

What type of prompt can you use to find a file someone emailed you recently?

“Delete files older than a week”

“Find the file Harry emailed me last week”

“Print all attachments from Harry"

“Open recent downloads from Harry”