Microsoft 365 Outlook - Quarantined Email

M365's Outlook / Exchange Online Protection will automatically scan incoming email for bulk, spam, phishing and malware (viruses) and automatically quarantine suspicious emails preventing them from appearing in your Inbox. The system will notify you of these suspicious packages and give you opportunity release items the algorithm may have misidentified or permanently block the sender.

Are you Missing an Email? It may be Quarantined

This article includes the steps on how to retrieve missing emails from quarantine in Outlook.

M365 Outlook – Why are Emails being Quarantined?

Outlook contains built-in protection that automatically scans incoming emails for spam which may contain phishing attempts and/or viruses.

If an email looks suspicious to Microsoft’s spam filtering tool, the email will be put into quarantine and will not appear in your Inbox.

However, this system isn’t always perfect, and legitimate emails may end up in quarantine. This is why Microsoft notifies you each time an email ends up in quarantine. The image below is an example of this notification that is sent via email.

Review your quarantined emails by following this link: https://security.microsoft.com/quarantine

Please do not remove suspicious emails from your Quarantine. Here are a few tips that will keep you more secure:

• Never provide your credit card details or login credentials in response to any email.
• Be cautious of unsolicited emails and links, even if they appear to come from a trusted source.
• Regularly update your passwords and use strong, unique passwords for different accounts.
• Ensure your antivirus software and other security tools are up-to-date.
• Avoid downloading attachments or clicking on links from unknown or unverified sources.

If you are unsure whether an email is legitimate or not, please ask IT Security by emailing your questions to itsecurity@okanagan.bc.ca. We are happy to verify the legitimacy of the email, which will greatly assist in maintaining a secure work environment for OC. 

Releasing an Email from Quarantine

After reviewing your quarantined emails at https://security.microsoft.com/quarantine and you are certain that the email was wrongly put into quarantine, you can release it by following the steps below:

1. Select the email you know is legitimate.
2. Then, click Release at the top of the email list.

3. The email will now be removed from quarantine and show up in your regular Outlook inbox.

You have 15 days to Release quarantined emails to your Inbox.