You don’t need a Copilot subscription to equip Outlook with an AI assistant. A more generic (free) AI tool like the European Mistral can also help you quickly find the right information.
Outlook contains a wealth of information, but even the greatest expert in folders, subfolders, and categories sometimes loses track among all the emails. What was the latest status of that big project, of which three email chains are now circulating? And why can’t Outlook’s search function find that one important email somewhere in the middle of the chain, which contains a piece of essential information?
If AI can be useful anywhere, it’s there. An LLM can easily search through your emails, summarize the most important points, and highlight action items. You don’t need a Copilot subscription for this. You don’t even need to rely on AI from Microsoft or any other American player. Mistral allows you to connect your Outlook account even with the free version.
European AI
Mistral is a French AI company and immediately the biggest potential competitor to OpenAI and Anthropic that Europe has to offer. For this reason, the world’s most important chip machine builder ASML invested a lot of money in the company. Supported by Dutch money, Mistral hopes to become a relevant AI player with its chatbot ‘Le Chat’. We explore how to let this cat sniff through your emails.
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First of all, go to chat.mistral.ai and accept the terms of use. Click on Sign In in the top right corner and create an account. Logging in with Microsoft, Apple, or Google is also possible. -
Now navigate to Intelligence on the left and expand the menu. Click on Connectors. From the Recommended Connectors, select the Outlook option. -
A new window will now appear. Click on Privacy to make sure that Mistral will keep your data private. Your emails will not be used to train the AI, even with the free version of Le Chat. -
Now click on Connect and log in with your Microsoft account. Grant the necessary permissions when Microsoft asks for them by clicking Accept. -
You will now return to the screen with connectors. There you will see a green dot next to the Outlook connector indicating that your account is connected. -
Navigate to Chat to start a conversation about your emails. In the chat window, you’ll immediately see a small Outlook icon indicating that the connector is active. Click on it to grant or deny access for a specific conversation. -
Ask a question, and don’t forget to mention that Le Chat should search your mailbox for the answer. You’ll now see Querying Outlook while the AI bot is thinking. When Le Chat is ready, an answer will appear based on the content of relevant emails in your inbox.
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You can also ask Mistral to draft a new email and address it to a contact. Emails will appear as drafts in Outlook, with all fields correctly filled in. For verification purposes, you still need to click Send in Outlook itself. Unfortunately, Mistral can’t search your calendar yet.
Mistral (and other AI tools) are built to create order in unstructured data. An overflowing mailbox is a good example of this. The added value can be significant, especially when you want to quickly distill information from different email chains.
However, keep in mind that it’s best not to connect a business email account within your company to Mistral on your own initiative. Despite Mistral’s good privacy guarantees, it’s best to check what your organization’s policy is.