How to Remove an Email from Quarantine in Microsoft Outlook

How to release a quarantined email

Go to the quarantine portal: security.microsoft.com/quarantine

• Sign in with your work account. You may be prompted for multi-factor authentication (MFA).
• Navigate to Email & collaboration → Review → Quarantine (or use the direct link above).
• Use the search bar or filters to locate your message — you can filter by sender, subject, or date received.
• Select the message checkbox, then click Release email at the top of the list.
• In the confirmation pane, choose Release to all recipients (or specific recipients if needed), then click Release message.
• The email will appear in your inbox within a few minutes.

Releasing via the quarantine digest email

Microsoft 365 sends a periodic quarantine digest email listing recently quarantined messages. If you received one:

• Open the quarantine notification email in your inbox.
• Click Review message next to the message you want.
• You will be taken to the quarantine portal. Follow steps 4–6 above.

Preventing the sender from being quarantined again

After releasing a message, you can allowlist the sender so future messages are delivered directly:

• In the release confirmation pane, check Allow messages from this sender before clicking Release.
• Alternatively, add the sender to your Safe Senders list in Outlook: Settings → Mail → Junk email → Safe senders and domains.

When to contact IT instead

Contact the IT helpdesk if any of the following apply:

• You receive a permissions error or cannot access the quarantine portal.
• The message is older than 30 days — it may have been automatically deleted from quarantine.
• The message was quarantined as high-confidence phishing or malware — these require admin review before release.
• You need to release a message quarantined in another user’s mailbox.
• You release a message but it keeps getting re-quarantined — IT can whitelist the sender at the policy level.