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Chris House's avatar
Chris House
Tin Contributor
Jul 03, 2026

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.

1 Reply

  • 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.