How to summarize an email

Some emails are long because they need to be: a supplier setting out revised terms, a school newsletter with six dates buried in it, a lawyer explaining the next stage of a house purchase with three attachments. Others are long because they’re a thread forty replies deep, where the current state of things is spread across messages from five people. Either way, the question is usually the same. What does this say, and what do I need to do?

This guide covers the common ways of getting the gist of an email, and two ways of doing it in Fabric: forwarding the message in, or connecting your inbox so the AI assistant can summarize what’s already there.

How people usually summarize an email

Reading it properly is still the default, and for a single important message it’s often the right call. The cost grows with thread length. On a long thread, people tend to read the latest reply, scroll up for context, and miss the change agreed somewhere in the middle.

Many email clients now offer an AI summary at the top of a thread. It’s convenient and sits right where the email is. It works on the conversation in front of you, which suits one thread at a time, and the summary stays inside the email client.

Copying the text into ChatGPT or Claude is the other common route. It gives a flexible summary and you can ask follow-up questions. Long threads need tidying before pasting, attachments go in separately, and the summary ends up in a chat history, away from the email and anything related to it. Some people are also uneasy about pasting personal or work email into a general chatbot.

Step 1: Forward the email to Fabric

For a single email or thread, forward it to your Fabric email address. Attachments come along with it, so a contract or a PDF schedule lands in Fabric beside the message that explained it. Fabric only accepts mail from your verified account address. On a team, you can approve extra sender addresses so colleagues can forward to the same place.

Forwarding works from any email client on any device, and it’s included on the free plan. It suits the emails you want to keep and come back to: anything with dates, terms, instructions or decisions in it.

Step 2: Connect Gmail or Outlook for your whole inbox

If you’d rather summarize email where it already lives, connect your inbox. Go to the Fabric marketplace, choose Gmail or Outlook, and click Install. A permissions screen appears; sign in to your email account and grant access. You’re sent back to Fabric, which confirms that the connection worked.

Once connected, search and the AI assistant can reach your email alongside everything else in Fabric. Setup happens once, and you carry on reading and replying in Gmail or Outlook as before. Connections need a paid plan.

Step 3: Get the summary

Fabric writes a short summary of each item you save, including forwarded emails, so a quick read is there as soon as the message arrives. It also extracts the topics an email covers and suggests tags, which is how smart collections you set up can gather, say, every email about the house move in one place.

For a summary shaped around a question, use the AI assistant. If your forwarded emails sit in a folder, open that folder and open the assistant; it’s automatically limited to the folder. Ask something like “Summarize this thread and list what’s been agreed, what’s still open, and who’s waiting on me.” Answers cite the emails they drew from with clickable references. One subscription covers models from the major labs, including Gemini, OpenAI, Claude and DeepSeek, so you can pick the one whose summaries you prefer.

For a connected inbox, click Search (or press Cmd+F on Mac / Ctrl+F on Windows) and click inside the knowledge search panel, on the right of the search screen on web and desktop or in the bottom drawer on mobile. It searches Fabric and your connected apps, so a question like “What has the landlord said about the deposit since March?” can pull from several separate threads. Follow-up questions work in the same panel, and the assistant runs the same kind of search if you ask it there. Fabric search covers the details.

Step 4: Keep the summary with the email

Save the assistant’s answer as a note and keep it in the folder with the forwarded email. The next time the topic comes up, the summary is the first thing you read, and the original is a click away.

The assistant is also reachable by email. Each AI in Fabric has its own inbox address, so you can send it a message from any email client and get a reply, which is handy when you’re on your phone and don’t want to open another app.

For the busiest sources of email, a routine helps more than one-off summaries. How to stop school emails getting lost in your inbox shows one way to set that up.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get AI to summarize a long email thread?

Forward the thread to your Fabric email address, then open the AI assistant in the folder where it’s saved and ask for a summary. Answers cite the messages they came from.

Can Fabric summarize emails in Gmail or Outlook?

Yes. Connect Gmail or Outlook from the Fabric marketplace, then ask in the knowledge search panel or the AI assistant. Connections need a paid plan.

Can I summarize an email for free?

Forwarding emails to your Fabric address is on the free plan, which includes limited AI use. Connecting Gmail or Outlook needs a paid plan.

Does it summarize the attachments too?

Attachments you forward are saved in Fabric alongside the email, and the AI assistant can read them when answering questions about the folder they’re in.

Who can send email to my Fabric address?

Only your verified Fabric account address by default. On a team, you can approve extra sender addresses.

Can I summarize several related emails at once?

Yes. Keep forwarded emails on the same topic in one folder and ask the assistant there, or ask in the knowledge search panel to pull from a connected inbox.

What if I need an email explained in plain language, not only summarized?

Ask the assistant to explain it as well as summarize it. How to use AI to explain a confusing letter or bill has examples of the kinds of questions to ask.

Can I find an old email later without remembering the subject line?

Yes. Describe what it was about and search matches by meaning as well as by keyword. How to find an old email attachment fast covers searching for attachments.