Forum Discussion
Outlook Classic - Crashes When Drafting with Copilot in RDS environment
Hi all,
I'm interested to see whether anyone else is experiencing this issue, particularly in an RDS environment.
We have a number of users who have paid-for Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, including the integration within Office applications such as Outlook, Word and Excel.
In Outlook Classic running on our Windows Server 2019 RDS environment, Copilot no longer works correctly.
When a user presses Alt + I to Draft with Copilot, or clicks the Copilot pencil icon within the body of an email, and then enters a prompt, Copilot displays "Writing your email" and the blue progress bar starts moving from left to right. At that point it freezes, Outlook crashes, and closes.
In some cases Outlook will automatically reopen after the crash.
The Copilot integration appears to work fine in Excel and Word.
Is anyone else running Outlook Classic in a Windows Server 2019 RDS environment with Microsoft 365 Copilot licences?
I would be interested to know if you have experienced the same issue.
I've tried repairing and reinstalling Office apps, and always ensure they are fully up to date.
Thanks.
7 Replies
Until the RDS/Outlook Classic problem is resolved, use Outlook on the web for Copilot-assisted drafting and then continue normal mail work in Outlook Classic. This keeps the affected action outside the shared RDS Outlook process and does not require another Office reinstall. If the crash occurs only in Classic Outlook, open a Microsoft 365 support request with the Office build, Windows Server build, and a crash dump so the product team can correlate it with the Copilot feature.
The release notes state that the issue was resolved in version 2606 (Build 20131.20126), released on July 7.
We installed this version, but Outlook still crashes when using Copilot. Has anyone found a workaround or solution?
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdates/current-channel#version-2606-july-07We are expericencing the same issue at two different sites: one RDS environment hosted in a datacenter on a shared platform with FSLogix, and another on-premises Hyper-V RDS environment using only UDP. In both cases, the affected users have paid Microsoft 365 Copilot Pro licenses. Outlook Classic crashes when drafting emails with Copilot.
Same Issue here since last Update, two different Customers, both Server 2019 with FSLogix.
We are experiencing the exact same issue and have not found a solution yet. We do also use FSLogix on RDS.
Have you managed to resolve it in the meantime?
Hi Chris , I’d treat this as an Office build plus RDS compatibility issue until proven otherwise. Check whether the same user works on a normal workstation, then test Outlook safe mode and disable add-ins. I’d also compare the Office build before and after the issue started, because Copilot in classic Outlook can be sensitive to build, WebView2, and shared/RDS environment differences.
Thanks Jamony,
I agree it's likely to be an Office build and RDS compatibility issue. Copilot in Outlook works absolutely fine outside of RDS on the local workstations. But inside the RDS session, invoking Copilot as described above causes Outlook to crash. The same behaviour occurs for all the users with a paid-for M365 Copilot licence.
Outlook Classic itself, even without Copilot, is very well known in the community for being very sensitive and tempermantal!
