Microsoft will retire the Outlook feature that lets Copilot assign a priority to emails
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
In 30 seconds
Copilot will stop ranking Outlook mail by importance, as Microsoft is dropping Prioritize from all versions of the app. The phase-out begins on October 26 and should wrap up toward the end of March 2027, with no work needed from administrators. Microsoft ties the decision to streamlining Copilot and focusing its spending, and in February it already scrapped a similar view on phones.
Microsoft is going to retire Prioritize, the Outlook feature through which Copilot, its AI assistant, screens incoming email as it lands in the inbox and labels each message high, normal or low priority. It bases that call on signals such as who is on the thread, their roles and what the message says, according to Microsoft's support page. The feature only sorts mail received after it is switched on, flags important messages with an up arrow and lets users give it their own criteria, such as a sender, a company or a project.
The company told administrators through the Microsoft 365 message center (notice MC1519861, published on October 21 and updated on the 22nd with a new timeline). The retirement starts on October 26, 2026, and Microsoft expects to finish it by the end of March 2027. Prioritize will disappear from every version of Outlook, and once it is gone, users will no longer have access to it.
Microsoft says the move lets it "simplify the Outlook Copilot experience and focus our ongoing investments." Administrators do not have to do anything, though the company suggests telling affected users, getting support teams ready and removing mentions of the feature from internal documentation and training materials. The notice does not say whether anything will replace it.
Back in February, Microsoft had already pulled the Copilot priority view from Outlook for iOS and Android, which grouped high-priority emails and those awaiting a reply, citing user feedback and costs. That view had started rolling out in June 2025 and required a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
Retiring an AI feature already in use is rarer than announcing a new one, and Microsoft is doing it for the second time this year in the same product: first the mobile priority view went, and now the whole sorting feature follows. The stated reason, focusing investment, together with the costs that weighed on the earlier removal, suggests that analyzing every email with AI is expensive to keep running. For companies paying for Copilot, it is a reminder that the features included can change from one quarter to the next. Anyone who relied on Prioritize to avoid missing important messages should prepare a simple alternative now, such as rules by sender or folders by project, and explain the change to their team before it disappears.
Source: Microsoft 365 Message Center Archive · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
