How do I manage quarantined messages in Outlook?

You might receive an email notification from Microsoft stating that you have quarantined messages. Emails that come into VIU mailboxes are scanned by our security programs. If they are found to be potentially dangerous, or score as possibly highly unwanted, they are moved into a secure location for your review.  

Microsoft will send you an email notification when one or more of your messages are quarantined. The notification includes a list of the quarantined messages and a link to view them online. These notification emails are sent once per day. 

There are two ways to access and manage your quarantined messages:

• Option 1: Go directly to the Microsoft 365 Defender portal.
• Option 2: Use the email notification

Option 1: Go directly to the Microsoft 365 Defender portal

You can access and manage your quarantined messages by going directly to the Microsoft 365 Defender Portal. This option does not require you to wait for an email notification.

1. Go directly to the Microsoft 365 Defender Portal and sign in with your VIU email and password. 
2. On the Quarantine page, you can see all your quarantined messages and perform the same actions as described in Option 1.

You can also filter and sort your quarantined messages by various criteria, such as date, sender, recipient, subject, type, and verdict.

Option 2: Use the email notification

When you receive a quarantine notification email, it will look something like this:

Unsure if the notification email you received is a legitimate one? 

Don’t click anything in the email. Just follow the steps in Option 1 and see if there is anything in your quarantine mailbox. 

What if I have a Shared Mailbox?

If you have a shared mailbox and want to see the quarantined mail, follow either Option 1 or Option 2 as outlined above.

1. Log in with your account that has access to the Shared Mailbox, and go to the Quarantine tab.

2. Click on the Filter button.

3. Type the shared mailbox address into the Recipient Address field, then click Apply.

Your emails should now be shown in the list from the shared mailbox.

I'm in, what's next?

Once signed in you can filter and sort your quarantined messages by various criteria, such as date, sender, recipient, subject, type, and verdict. 

Depending on the type of message, you will be able to do one or more of the following actions: 

• View: You can preview the message content and headers without releasing it from quarantine. 
• Release: You can send the message to your inbox if you think it was wrongly quarantined. 
• Report: You can report the message to Microsoft as a false positive (not junk) or a false negative (junk) to help improve the accuracy of our spam filter. 
• Delete: You can delete the message from quarantine if you don’t want to keep it. 
• Request release: You can request an administrator to review and release the message if it contains malware or is classified as high confidence phishing. These types of messages can only be released by IT. 

To perform any of these actions, select the message from the list and click on the corresponding button at the top of the page.