Office 365 Documentation

LSU Health - Legitimate Email in the Junk Email Folder

 

Contents

Introduction

What can I do if legitimate email ends up in my Junk Email folder?

Outlook Desktop

Outlook on the Web (OWA)
 

Focused Inbox

 

Introduction

Microsoft Outlook learns over time which emails are legitimate and which are spam, based on your interaction with your email.  If email lands in your Junk Email folder, you can click "Not Junk",  and the email will be returned to your Inbox.  If emails from the same sender keep going to your Junk Email folder, below are some steps you can take to resolve this issue.

If you are ever expecting email, and it does not show up in your mailbox or Junk Email folder, please contact Postmaster@lsuhsc.edu and provide as much information as you can such as expected sender, subject, date/time. Postmaster will investigate and advise whether the email reached our mail system.  If our system quarantined the message, Postmaster will release it if they can.  Quarantined messages are only kept for 30 days from the received date.

 

What can I do if legitimate email ends up in my Junk Email folder?
 

Each of the options below will help keep legitimate email from your Junk Email folder.  You should not need to do all of them.

 

Outlook Desktop

Make sure the sender is not in a blocked sender list.

  • In the Junk Email folder select the message you want to unblock. 
  • Right-click on the message and select Junk | Never Block Sender.


Add the sender to your Outlook contacts

  • Click an email from that sender and locate the sender's email address at the top of the email.
  • Right click on the sender's name or email address and a dropdown menu will appear.
  • From the dropdown menu select "Add to Outlook Contacts"
  • In the window that opens, fill in the details you want to save and when finished select "Save".
     

     AddtoOutlookContacts

Add the sender's email address to your Safe Senders list  

  • Under the Home tab in Outlook click on the Junk icon | Junk E-mail Options | Safe Senders tab.
  • Click the Add button. In the window that appears type in the email address of the person you want to add to your Safe Senders list and click OK.


SafeSenders3a
SafeSenders3b

SafeSenders3c

    

Outlook on the Web (OWA)


Correct misclassification of a message as Junk Mail

  • Go to the Junk Email folder and locate the message
  • Right click the message
  • From the drop down menu select Security options | Mark as not junk


OWA1notjunk

If emails continue getting sent to your Junk folder, you can completely override the spam filters with the Safe Senders list

  • Click the gear menu at the top right of the Outlook.office.com website and then click View all outlook settings.
  • Click the junk email option in the left pane.
  • Add senders to the Safe senders and domains list to prevent Outlook from ever sending emails from them to your spam folder.


OWA3doc

 

Focused Inbox

If you continue to experience problems with Junk Email then you might consider turning if off and using a newer feature from Microsoft called Focused Inbox. 

Focused Inbox divides the Inbox into the Focused tab and the Other tab.  The emails you are most likely to read and respond to are placed under the Focused tab and the emails that are deemed less important and some that might be considered spam are placed under the Other tab.  This sorting is done automatically and can be trained by moving emails between the two tabs, and gradually the algorithm will improve its ability to sort the emails the way you need. Note: In Outlook, you can right-click and select "Move to Focused" or "Move to Other" to train the algorithm and have the email where you want it.  Similar options are available in Outlook on the Web, and in Outlook for Mobile.

More information on Focused Inbox is provided in this article
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/focused-inbox-for-outlook-f445ad7f-02f4-4294-a82e-71d8964e3978   

Focused Inbox is available for the following versions of Outlook.   

Outlook for Microsoft 365  
Outlook 2021 
Outlook 2019 
Outlook 2016 
Outlook on the web 
Outlook.com Mail for Windows 10 
Outlook Mail for Windows 10 
Outlook on the web for Exchange Server 2016

If your system requires updates in order to support Focused Inbox, please contact you local PC support.