Find and release an email from quarantine

Microsoft 365 holds suspicious email in quarantine instead of delivering it. Unlike your Junk folder, quarantine isn’t in Outlook: you check it on a separate page.

Symptoms

• Someone says they sent you an email, but it isn’t in your Inbox or Junk Email.
• You received a quarantine notification email listing held messages.

Cause

Microsoft’s filters flagged the message as spam, bulk mail or phishing.

Fix

1. Open quarantine

Go to security.microsoft.com/quarantine and sign in with your work account.

2. Find the message

Search or filter by sender, subject or date. Messages are normally kept for 30 days, then deleted for good.

3. Check it before you release it

Select the message and preview it. Ask yourself:

• Were you expecting it, from this sender?
• Does the sender’s address exactly match the company it claims to be?
• Is it pushing you to click a link, sign in or pay urgently?

If anything feels off, leave it in quarantine. See Spot and report a phishing email.

4. Release it

Select Release (or Request release if your organization requires an admin to approve). The message is delivered to your Inbox.

If that didn’t work

• The message isn’t listed: messages flagged as high confidence phishing or malware are visible only to admins, by design.
• It keeps getting quarantined: ask the sender to check their email setup, or ask us to review it. Don’t add whole domains to your safe senders list without checking with us.

When to call us

• You need a message an admin must release.
• You released a message and then clicked a link or opened an attachment you’re unsure about. Call us straight away.
• Important email from a regular partner is repeatedly quarantined.