Junk email and quarantine in Outlook

Microsoft 365 filters suspicious and unwanted email before it reaches your inbox. Sometimes a good message gets caught, and sometimes a bad one gets through. Here is how to handle both.

Where did my email go?

A missing message is usually in one of two places:

• Junk Email folder: inside your mailbox, next to Inbox. You can see and move these messages yourself.
• Quarantine: held by Microsoft before it reaches your mailbox, usually because it looks like spam, phishing or contains something risky. You may receive a notification about it.

Messages in both places are deleted automatically after a while, so check soon if you are expecting something.

Rescue a good message from Junk

1. Open the Junk Email folder.
2. Select the message.
3. Choose Not junk (in the message bar or on the Report menu). The message moves to your Inbox.

To make sure future email from that sender arrives, you can also add them to your Safe senders list in Outlook’s junk email settings.

Block a sender

1. Select a message from the sender.
2. Choose Block > Block sender (in Outlook on the web and new Outlook, this may be under the … menu or the Report menu). In classic Outlook, use Junk > Block Sender.

Blocking works well for annoying marketing mail. For dangerous messages, report them instead.

Report phishing or junk

1. Select the suspicious message. Do not click links or open attachments.
2. Choose Report > Report phishing (for scams and fake login pages) or Report junk (for unwanted mail). Some versions show this as a Report message button.
3. Confirm if asked. The message is removed from your inbox and Microsoft uses your report to improve filtering.

Quarantine notifications

You may receive an email saying messages are being held in quarantine for you, with buttons to review or release them. Real notices exist, but attackers also send fake ones to steal passwords.

Review quarantined messages safely

1. Go to https://security.microsoft.com/quarantine and sign in with your work email.
2. Find the message by sender or subject and select it to see details.
3. If you recognize and trust it, choose Release (or Request release, if your organization requires an administrator to approve it).
4. If you do not recognize it, leave it there. It will be deleted automatically.

Messages flagged as high-confidence phishing or malware usually cannot be released by users. If you believe one is legitimate, contact us before asking the sender to resend.