IT之家 October 24 news, tech media Windows Central published a blog post yesterday (October 23), reporting that Microsoft has announced it will begin, on October 26, 2026,retiring the "Prioritize My Inbox" (Prioritize My Inbox) feature in Outlook.
According to the blog post cited by IT之家, the feature launched in 2025 and mainly works by calling on Copilot AI to help Outlook users sort their emails, thereby helping users more quickly find what truly needs to be prioritized among large volumes of mail. When it first launched, Microsoft called the feature an "email revolution".
Matthew Marzynski, then Chief Product Manager of Microsoft's Digital division, once said:
Imagine if everyone could have their own personal assistant, filtering and pushing the most valuable information to you — how wonderful that would be.
"Prioritize My Inbox" is like having a personal assistant. It can improve your response speed, save you time, keep you focused on priorities, and help you handle business-critical communications. It can also ease the pressure we face when confronted with massive amounts of unread email.
The feature can use Copilot to learn users' work styles and email handling habits, automatically identifying the messages most relevant to their workflows and highlighting them in the inbox.
Users can also use filters and custom prompts to tell Copilot which types of emails matter more, such as customer replies, meeting arrangements, approval requests, or emails related to specific projects.
However, the feature had been live for only about 1 year before Microsoft decided to pull it. According to the official announcement, the feature will begin retiring starting 10/26/2026 and will be gradually taken offline, with complete removal from all Outlook clients expected by the end of 3/2027.
The company did not explain the reason in detail, saying only that removing the feature will help streamline the overall Outlook Copilot experience. For users who rely on AI to automatically sort their inboxes, traditional methods such as "Focused Inbox" will remain available for managing email going forward.