No email filtering system is perfect and it’s inevitable that the occasional message will end up in your spam or junk folder.
If you use Outlook for work, they may even get put into ‘quarantine’ and unless you know where to look and find those emails, you might think they never arrived at all. Note that quarantine applies only to organisations using Microsoft 365 with mailboxes in Exchange Online or standalone Exchange Online Protection (EOP), not personal Outlook accounts.
Here, we’ll show you how to check for quarantined emails, release them from the quarantine folder and mark them as ‘not junk’ to avoid it happening again.
This procedure is the same for desktop and iOS and Android web browsers.
How to find your quarantined messaged in Outlook (Desktop)
1. First, go to https://protection.office.com/quarantine to open the quarantine page. Note that you may receive daily emails which give a summary of the messages in quarantine, but if not, go straight to the web page to view the list.
2. If you’re already signed in to your email, the page will automatically show the ‘review page. If not, you’ll need to sign in using your credentials.
3. A list will appear of all the messages flagged as quarantine.
How to release your quarantined messages in Outlook (Desktop)
1. Click the box next to a specific message. A tab will appear on the right with the options ‘release message,’ ‘view message header,’ ‘preview message’ and ‘remove from quarantine.’
2. Click the button marked ‘Release message.’
3. Then click ‘Release message’ in the bottom left hand corner in the next tab that opens.
4. Once released, click ‘Done’ and the message will appear at the top of your inbox.
5. To remove from the list, select the message and click ‘Remove from quarantine. Next, click ‘Yes.’
How to find and release your quarantined messages (iOS and Android)
1. Go to https://protection.office.com/quarantine
2. Sign in with your email username and password
3. The page will redirect to the review list of all quarantined messages
4. Select a specific message and click ‘release message’ in the page that appears
5. Click ‘done.’
6. Next, to delete the message from the list click the message and select ‘remove from quarantine.’ Next, click ‘yes.’
You might like to take a look at our guide on how to block emails.