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.
account only remote wipe device
Hello, My o365 account is E3. My phone is android, I installed outlook on my phone. I tested to wipe the outlook on my phone with my admin account, but after I click the "account only remote wip1e device", it showed "Saving in progress", then showed a red "X". The client is Outlook for iOS and Android, client type is outlook not EAS. Do I need more steps to wipe outlook on my phone? or a role/permission is missed? Thanks and regards, AdsnowReference Architecture for an On-Premises AI Assistant for Microsoft Exchange.
Bringing Secure AI Capabilities to On-Premises Microsoft Exchange Many organisations continue to operate Microsoft Exchange within their own data centres because of regulatory requirements, data-residency policies, security considerations, operational dependencies, or the need to maintain complete control over sensitive email information. At the same time, users increasingly expect Artificial Intelligence to help them manage growing email volumes, understand long conversation threads, locate information quickly, analyse attachments, and prepare relevant responses. This creates an important question: Can organisations introduce AI-assisted email capabilities without migrating their on-premises Exchange environment or sending email data to public AI services? With the right architecture, the answer is yes. The opportunity for AI in on-premises Exchange Users spend a significant amount of time reading lengthy email chains, searching for previous discussions, identifying action items, reviewing attachments, and preparing responses. An AI-powered email assistant can help reduce this effort while continuing to operate within the organisation’s controlled infrastructure. Such a solution can be integrated with Microsoft Exchange through an Outlook Web App, or OWA, Add-In. The Add-In provides AI-assisted capabilities within the familiar Outlook Web interface and can be centrally deployed to selected users or Active Directory groups by the Exchange administrator. The purpose is not to replace Exchange or change the way emails are managed. Instead, it introduces an intelligence layer that helps authorised users interact more efficiently with the email information they are already permitted to access. Key capabilities of an AI-powered Exchange Email Assistant 1. Email and conversation summarisation The assistant can summarise an individual email or an entire conversation thread. Instead of reading every message in a long chain, the user can receive a structured summary covering: The purpose of the conversation. Important decisions and commitments. Key action items. Deadlines and pending responses. Relevant information available in attachments. The summarisation process can consider both incoming and sent messages so that the complete context of the conversation is preserved. 2. Contextual draft reply generation The assistant can prepare a suggested response based on the complete email thread and the user’s instructions. Users may select an appropriate tone, such as: Formal. Neutral. Technical. The generated response is placed in the user’s Exchange Draft folder or displayed for review within the OWA Add-In. A critical control is that the AI assistant does not independently send the email. The user remains responsible for reviewing, editing, approving, and sending the response. This human-review approach helps organisations adopt AI while retaining accountability over external and internal communications. 3. Natural-language mailbox search Traditional mailbox search generally depends on exact keywords, sender names, subjects, or date filters. An AI-enabled search experience allows users to search their mailbox using natural-language questions, such as: “Find emails received last month regarding the infrastructure renewal.” “Show unread emails from the finance team that require my approval.” “Find the discussion where the customer confirmed the delivery date.” “Summarise emails from a particular sender concerning the purchase order.” The solution can combine semantic search with traditional keyword-based search to improve the relevance of results. Users can also apply filters such as sender, subject, date range, read or unread status, and conversation thread. 4. Attachment analysis and OCR Important information is often contained within email attachments rather than the email body itself. An on-premises AI assistant can process supported documents, including: PDF files. Microsoft Word documents. Microsoft Excel files. Scanned documents. Image-based attachments. Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, can be used to extract information from scanned or image-based documents. The extracted content can then support email summarisation, contextual draft generation, and mailbox search. For example, a user may ask the assistant to prepare a response based on the commercial terms or delivery date mentioned in an attached document. Maintaining strict mailbox privacy Mailbox privacy is one of the most important architectural considerations for an enterprise AI email assistant. Each user must only be able to access and process emails from their own authorised mailbox. Information retrieved from one user’s mailbox must never become available to another user. This isolation should be enforced across every layer of the solution, including: User authentication. Exchange access tokens. Application sessions. Search indexes. Vector embeddings. AI prompts and responses. Cache and temporary data. Audit logs. The backend should validate the authenticated user and verify mailbox ownership for every request made to Exchange. Where vector search is used, mailbox data should be stored in user-isolated collections, partitions, or namespaces. This helps prevent cross-user retrieval at the data layer rather than relying only on controls within the user interface. Operating without public cloud AI services For organisations with strict security or data-sovereignty requirements, the AI models and supporting components can be deployed within the customer’s infrastructure. A fully on-premises architecture may include: A locally hosted Large Language Model. An on-premises embedding model. A re-ranking model. A vector database. A keyword-search engine. A backend API layer. An OCR or document-intelligence service. A secured OWA Add-In. Integration with Active Directory. Audit, monitoring, and administrative controls. The entire solution can operate within an internal network without sending email content, attachments, prompts, or generated responses to public AI platforms. This model can also support air-gapped environments where internet access is either restricted or completely unavailable. Centralised deployment and administration The OWA Add-In can be deployed centrally through Exchange administration controls. Administrators can assign the Add-In only to selected users or security groups. Employees who are not assigned the solution will not see the AI assistant within their Outlook Web interface. Administrative controls may include: User and group assignment. Enabling or disabling individual AI features. Summarisation-only mode. Draft-generation controls. Attachment-size restrictions. Session and retention policies. Model and performance settings. Usage monitoring. Audit logs. Resource utilisation monitoring. These controls allow organisations to begin with a limited group of users and gradually extend the solution after validating performance, security, and user adoption. Security and governance considerations Introducing AI into an enterprise email environment requires more than deploying a language model. The complete solution should be designed around security, privacy, governance, and responsible AI principles. Important considerations include: Authentication and authorisation The solution should integrate with the organisation’s existing identity infrastructure, such as Active Directory, and enforce role-based access controls. Encryption Email content, attachments, indexes, logs, and other sensitive information should be encrypted both in transit and at rest. Data retention Organisations should clearly define whether AI prompts, generated summaries, and draft content are retained. In privacy-sensitive environments, generated content may remain available only for the active session and should not be permanently stored by the AI application. Auditability The system should record relevant operational events, such as the user identity, requested function, timestamp, and processing status. Depending on the organisation’s policy, the actual email or generated response content may be excluded from audit logs. Human oversight AI-generated responses should be treated as suggestions. The user must review and approve them before sending. The assistant should also disclose its limitations and avoid presenting uncertain outputs as confirmed facts. Performance and capacity On-premises AI processing depends on available compute, memory, storage, and GPU resources. The architecture should account for: Number of concurrent users. Average mailbox size. Volume and size of attachments. Expected response time. Model size. Search-index growth. OCR processing requirements. High availability and backup requirements. A practical adoption approach Organisations do not need to introduce all capabilities at once. A controlled proof of concept can begin with a limited number of users and a defined set of features. A practical implementation sequence may include: Phase 1: Email summarisation Start with individual email and conversation-thread summaries. This provides immediate value while keeping the initial architecture relatively focused. Phase 2: Contextual draft replies Introduce draft generation with mandatory user review and clearly defined tone controls. Phase 3: Attachment processing Enable OCR and document parsing for supported attachments. Phase 4: Intelligent mailbox search Index authorised mailbox content and introduce natural-language search with strict per-user isolation. Phase 5: Wider deployment After security testing, performance validation, and user feedback, extend the solution to additional departments or user groups. Conclusion Organisations operating on-premises Microsoft Exchange do not necessarily need to choose between maintaining control over their email environment and adopting AI-assisted productivity capabilities. A carefully designed on-premises AI email assistant can support email summarisation, contextual draft preparation, attachment analysis, and natural-language mailbox search while keeping sensitive information within the organisation’s infrastructure. The most important success factors are not limited to the AI model itself. Identity controls, mailbox isolation, human approval, auditing, infrastructure sizing, and data-governance policies are equally important. For organisations evaluating private, sovereign, or air-gapped AI, on-premises Exchange can become an effective starting point for introducing practical AI capabilities in a secure and controlled manner. Connect with us to implement this solution in your organization. About the Author Vinay Prakash is the CEO of Glorious Insight and an Ex Microsoft Employee. He works with organisations on Data, Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft cloud technologies, enterprise applications, and secure on-premises AI solutions. For technical discussions related to private or on-premises AI adoption, he can be reached at: Email: email address removed for privacy reasonsThe Demise of the OWA Light Client
On July 8, Microsoft said that they will retire the OWA Light client for Exchange Server in August 2026. But what happened to the OWA Light client for Exchange Online? It seems like Microsoft announced the retirement of OWA Light for Exchange Online in June 2024, but didn’t really make the fact clear in a blog post about consumer accounts. In any case, you can’t run OWA Light for Exchange Online, even if you wanted to. https://office365itpros.com/2026/07/17/owa-light-retirement/
Apply company branding to webparts in Outlook emails
Hi, We are having issues with Outlook emails pulling through company branding from Viva Amplify. We can customise the Outlook channel to edit the email output (i.e. changing the background colour of sections), but are struggling to change the colour theme for buttons - the buttons default to a blue theme and can't be changed. I am aware that the Brand Center may soon be able to work with Viva Amplify Outlook emails. Will the Brand Center allow company colours to be applied to webparts such as buttons? Thanks, Jake
How to resolve Junk email validation error
I'm attempting to add an email address to all users mailboxes using Set-mailboxJunkEmailConfiguration. The command fails and returns an email address as the error (see below). I've dumped the three lists contained in the record and the address displayed in the error isn't in any of them. The lists are TrustedSendersAndDomains, TrustedRecipientsAndDomains, and BlockedSendersAndDomains. The command I'm running is: set-mailboxjunkemailconfiguration -identity email address removed for privacy reasons -TrustedSendersAndDomains @{Remove="email address removed for privacy reasons"} The error returns: Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration: |Microsoft.Exchange.Data.Storage.JunkEmailValidationException|Junk email validation error. Value: mailto:email address removed for privacy reasons. Note: all email addresses have been changed. The error happens on a handful of accounts and the value is unique to each user. This error happens on approx. 20 of 5100 mailboxes. Any ideas?"Add to Calendar" functionality in the New Outlook
When a user receives an email with a Calendar meeting attached to it, they are able to click on the dropdown in the attachment and select "Add to Calendar". This functionality is supposed to add the meeting to the calendar without opening the attachment/invite itself. However, when the user clicks on "Add to Calendar", the meeting is displayed temporarily on the Calendar and then disappears. If another calendar meeting is being "Added to Calendar", it doesn't show up at all, even temporarily. Occasionally, the second meeting is added successfully, however, the first meeting then disappears. This behaviour is reproducible using different, independent accounts and devices - personal devices, corporate devices, personal Live accounts, corp email accounts, etc. The only thing that does work is to open the attachment and use "+Add to Calendar" feature from the invite. Any ideas on what is causing this or how to address this?
