Microsoft is shutting down the free Meeting Insight feature in Outlook between mid-August and early September 2026. Until now, it automatically surfaced relevant emails and files before appointments. Anyone who wants to keep this preparation aid will need a paid Copilot license for Microsoft 365 afterward.
Outlook loses a previously free preview feature
Meeting Insight is the Outlook feature that automatically compiles relevant emails and files before an appointment, without anyone having to search for them. According to the official announcement in the Microsoft 365 Message Center, the shutdown begins in mid-August 2026 and is completed on all platforms by early September 2026: Outlook on the web, the new Outlook for Windows, Outlook for Mac, the mobile apps, and Teams. It is replaced by the “Prepare for this meeting” feature from Copilot for Microsoft 365, which summarizes messages in a meeting window in a similar way and additionally lists open tasks and relevant documents. The difference for everyday work: the old feature was part of the regular Microsoft 365 subscription, the new one is not. According to research by the Windows blog Born City, the change directly affects everyone who has not booked a Copilot license so far. For them, automatic appointment preparation disappears without replacement, with no alternative in the regular subscription.
Without a Copilot subscription, automatic meeting preparation is missing
An office worker with ten appointments on the calendar in the morning could previously see directly in the appointment window which email belonged to which client or which document was last worked on, without searching the inbox. From September onward, this stops for everyone without a Copilot license: before each meeting, relevant messages and attachments have to be searched for manually again, for example via the normal Outlook search or a summary from Teams Recap of previous meetings. Anyone already using Teams Recap or another Copilot feature notices little of the change, since the tasks overlap anyway. For everyone else, the change means extra work preparing for meetings, especially with many appointments and shifting contacts.
Here is how to check whether the new feature is already available:
- Open an appointment in the calendar in Outlook on the web or in the new Outlook for Windows.
- Look near the top of the appointment window for the “Prepare for this meeting” section.
- If that section is missing, or a subscription notice appears instead, assume no Copilot license is active.
- Ask the IT department whether a Copilot license is planned.
- Until that is clarified, keep preparing appointments using the normal Outlook search.
Copilot costs extra, depending on the plan
The replacement feature only works with a paid Copilot license for Microsoft 365. For smaller companies this currently costs around €15.60 per user per month as a promotional price until the end of September 2026, then regularly €18.20; larger organizations pay about €26 per month for the Enterprise version. Either way, the Copilot license comes on top of an existing base subscription such as Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium, and it cannot be bought on its own (not independently verified, since the prices above come from a price-comparison site). According to Microsoft’s official support page, the new preparation feature works worldwide, including in Germany and the rest of the EU, once a Copilot license is active; no separate rollout for Germany is needed. Anyone without a Copilot subscription, and without plans to get one, will stop seeing these prompts in their inbox from September onward and will have to organize meeting preparation entirely on their own again.
What will matter is whether companies are willing to pay the extra Copilot fee for a feature that used to be included in the subscription price, or whether employees will simply have to do without automatic meeting preparation going forward. Since Copilot draws on emails, calendar appointments, and documents to build its summaries, it is worth checking internal rules on handling customer and contract data before booking a license. Whether Microsoft moves further, previously free Outlook features behind the Copilot license in the coming months remains open; observers such as Born City and Dr. Windows already see a pattern here.
