Setting Up Effective Draft Instructions in Outlook

Have you asked Copilot to draft an email and it sounds nothing like you? Have you spent time trying to refine the draft Copilot generated only to realize you would have been done by now if you had just done it manually from the start?

The following steps will walk you through how to set up Draft Instructions in Outlook so that your Copilot-generated emails don't sound like Copilot, but sound more like you!

Draft Instructions is a feature in Outlook that allows you to provide Copilot explicit instructions to use when you prompt it to generate an email. As you can image, these instructions can be very powerful but the challenge is writing effective instructions that will give you the results you're looking for. 

Let's get started!

Setting Up Draft Instructions in Outlook

Please note, an M365 Copilot license is required.

1. Navigate to M365 Copilot. You can open Copilot directly in Outlook, through the app, or web browser. Just be sure to use the "Work" version of Copilot. 

2. Enter this prompt: 

Analyze the tone, structure, and language patterns in my sent emails to determine my communication style. Summarize your findings into clear, actionable bullet points that I can use as personalized Draft Instructions for Copilot in Outlook. Ensure the bullet points are concise, reflect my typical tone (e.g., formal, friendly, persuasive), and include guidance on sentence structure, level of detail, and preferred greetings/closings.

3. Be sure to review Copilot's output for accuracy, make changes as needed. Copy the generated draft instructions and open Outlook. 

4. In Outlook, expand the drop-down menu next to the Copilot icon and select Settings. 

5. Navigate to Draft Instructions and enable custom instructions.

6. Paste in your Copilot-generated draft instructions and select Save.

You're all done! 

Now it's time to test it out. Start a new email and prompt Copilot to generate an initial draft or open an existing email and ask Copilot to generate a response. Notice how the output now sounds more like you rather than sounding like a robot.

Thank you for reading!

Please share your ideas in the comments—what use cases would you like me to cover next?