Before forwarding Copilot’s summary, open the email.
A tidy summary still needs checking. Copilot’s side-by-side email view makes that a little less annoying.
Copilot gives you a neat summary of an email thread. You forward it. Then someone points out that the deadline changed three replies later.
That is an illustrative workplace mishap, not a report of a particular Copilot failure. It is also a good reason to make checking the source part of the task.
A small change worth using
Microsoft’s August 25, 2026 release notes describe opening Outlook email references alongside Chat in the full Microsoft 365 Copilot app experience on Windows, Mac and web. Select an email reference in the response to inspect the message without opening a separate Outlook window.
This is an August update worth trying, not a new announcement today. Microsoft says features roll out gradually, including to subsets of users within an organization. Your account, license and app experience still matter; a work email address alone does not establish what you have.
Read the part you’re about to rely on
Try this with a routine, approved work thread:
Summarize the decisions, owners and deadlines in this thread. Cite the messages supporting each item. Flag conflicting dates or unresolved questions. Do not turn a suggestion into an agreed decision.
Then open the cited messages. Check who said it, when they said it, and whether a later reply changes the answer. A citation is a place to start checking; it is not a little certificate of correctness.
If the side-by-side view has not reached you, open the original thread in Outlook. The check still works. It just involves another window.
We keep asking AI to save us time. Spending some of that time checking the deadline seems like a reasonable arrangement.