Microsoft is killing an Outlook feature and replacing it with Copilot

Microsoft will retire Outlook Meeting Insights in August, replacing it with a Copilot-only experience for licensed Microsoft 365 users.

Microsoft is already having a hard time convincing users to jump ship from Outlook Classic to New Outlook, with many IT admins and users claiming that the latter is "hot garbage". Now, the Redmond tech firm has announced a change that may ruffle some more feathers as the company has decided to kill off an old feature in favor of a Copilot-based alternative.

According to MC1430531 on the Message Center, Microsoft is retiring Meeting Insights in Outlook starting from next month. If you're unaware of this capability, that would be surprising since it's enabled by default for meeting invites. Basically, it shows you some recently modified files and emails that Microsoft thinks are relevant to the context of your meeting. This content would be shown in the meeting invite, but not sent to other participants. It's worth noting that the feature is not based on large language models (LLMs), and has existed for some time.

Microsoft now plans to offer enhanced functionality via LLM technology, which means that Copilot is once again joining the fray. Once Meeting Insights go away, users will be able to leverage the Prepare for this meeting experience powered by Copilot. This will display a summary and context of your meeting, while also suggesting some action items, as seen below:

That said, Microsoft's advisory indicates that this replacement feature is only available to customers with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, which means that you can bid goodbye to any form of this functionality if your organization doesn't provision Copilot licenses.

All Outlook customers across all platforms are affected by this retirement (Outlook Classic is not mentioned though, interestingly). Microsoft says that the retirement process will begin in mid-August and complete by early September.

Do you use Meeting Insights? Do you find them useful? What do you think about the Copilot-based alternative? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Posted Saturday 18 July 2026 at 5:28 pm AEST (my time).

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