You want to use Copilot in Outlook to automatically suggest conditional formatting rules that highlight important emails. Conditional formatting in Outlook applies visual cues like colors and fonts to messages that match specific conditions. Copilot can analyze your email patterns and propose rules such as highlighting messages from your manager or flagging unread items from your team. This article explains how Copilot generates these suggestions, how to apply them, and what limitations to expect.
Key Takeaways: Copilot in Outlook Conditional Formatting Suggestions
- Copilot pane > Conditional formatting > Suggest rules: Opens a panel where Copilot analyzes your mailbox and proposes formatting rules based on sender, subject, or folder patterns.
- Rules are suggestions only: You must review each proposed rule and manually enable or edit it before it takes effect.
- Copilot learns from your actions: The more you manually create or accept rules, the more accurate Copilot’s future suggestions become.
What Copilot Does with Conditional Formatting in Outlook
Copilot in Outlook can examine your mailbox and suggest conditional formatting rules that match your behavior. For example, if you frequently read and reply to emails from a specific sender, Copilot may propose a rule that highlights all messages from that sender in blue. The feature works by analyzing patterns in your inbox, sent items, and folders over the past 30 days. It does not read the content of your messages. It only looks at metadata such as sender address, subject keywords, recipient lists, and folder locations.
To use Copilot for conditional formatting suggestions, you need an active Microsoft 365 subscription that includes Copilot for Microsoft 365. The feature is available in the new Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web. It is not available in classic Outlook for Windows or Outlook for Mac. Your administrator must also enable Copilot in your tenant.
How Copilot Generates Rule Suggestions
Copilot uses a lightweight machine learning model that runs on Microsoft servers. It scans your mailbox metadata and groups messages by common attributes. If it finds a cluster of messages from the same sender that you always mark as read quickly, it proposes a rule that highlights those messages. If you consistently move messages with certain subject keywords to a specific folder, Copilot may suggest a rule that colors those messages. The model updates its suggestions weekly based on your recent email activity.
Steps to View and Apply Copilot Conditional Formatting Suggestions
Follow these steps to open Copilot, view its suggested rules, and apply them to your Outlook mailbox.
- Open the Copilot pane
In Outlook on the web or the new Outlook for Windows, click the Copilot icon in the top ribbon. The Copilot pane opens on the right side of the screen. - Select the Conditional formatting option
In the Copilot pane, click the Conditional formatting button. A list of your current manual rules appears, along with a Suggest rules button at the top. - Click Suggest rules
Click Suggest rules. Copilot analyzes your recent mailbox activity and displays up to five suggested rules. Each suggestion shows the condition type, the condition value, and the formatting action. - Review each suggestion
Read each proposed rule carefully. For example, a suggestion might read: “Highlight emails from contoso.com in orange.” Click the rule to expand it and see the exact condition and formatting style. - Enable a suggestion
To apply a suggestion, click the toggle switch next to the rule. The rule is added to your conditional formatting list and becomes active immediately. You do not need to save separately. - Edit a suggestion before enabling
If you want to modify a suggestion, click the pencil icon next to the rule. Change the condition or the formatting color and font. Click Save to apply your edited version. - Dismiss a suggestion you do not want
Click the X icon on a suggestion to remove it from the list. Copilot will not show that pattern again for at least 30 days.
Common Issues with Copilot Conditional Formatting Suggestions
Copilot Does Not Show Any Suggestions
If the Suggest rules button is grayed out or returns no results, your mailbox may not have enough activity for Copilot to analyze. Copilot needs at least 50 messages with consistent patterns in the past 30 days. If you have a new mailbox or low email volume, the feature will not generate suggestions. Continue using Outlook normally for a few weeks, then check again.
Suggestions Do Not Match Your Actual Preferences
Copilot bases its suggestions on metadata patterns, not on your stated preferences. If you want a rule for a specific sender that Copilot never suggests, create that rule manually. Go to View > View settings > Conditional formatting and add a new rule. Copilot learns from your manual rules and may suggest similar patterns later.
Suggestions Disappear After You Enable Them
When you enable a suggestion, it moves from the suggestions list to your active conditional formatting rules. It no longer appears in the suggestions pane. This is normal. To see all your active rules, open View > View settings > Conditional formatting.
Copilot Suggests Rules for Senders You Already Filtered
Copilot may suggest rules for senders that you already manage with inbox rules or Sweep. This is because Copilot looks at metadata independently of other Outlook features. If you already have an inbox rule that moves messages from a sender to a folder, the Copilot suggestion is redundant. You can safely dismiss it.
| Item | Manual Conditional Formatting | Copilot Suggested Conditional Formatting |
|---|---|---|
| Setup effort | You define every condition and action from scratch | Copilot proposes rules based on your activity, you enable or edit them |
| Rule scope | Any condition you can define (sender, subject, folder, importance) | Limited to sender domain, subject keywords, and folder location |
| Learning capability | None — rules are static until you change them | Copilot updates suggestions weekly based on your recent behavior |
| Availability | All Outlook versions | New Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the web only |
| Privacy | Rules stay in your mailbox and are not sent to Microsoft servers | Copilot analyzes metadata on Microsoft servers to generate suggestions |
Copilot in Outlook can help you set up conditional formatting rules faster by suggesting patterns from your own email activity. The suggestions appear in the Copilot pane under the Conditional formatting section. You must review each suggestion and enable it manually. If Copilot does not suggest the rule you want, create it manually using the standard conditional formatting settings. Over time, Copilot refines its suggestions based on the rules you accept or create. For best results, keep your mailbox active and check the suggestions pane weekly.