How To Whitelist an Email Address in Microsoft Outlook

Spam filtering is an excellent tool that saves a lot of time as it recognizes potential spam messages and flags them as spam automatically saving you time going through a pack-filled inbox. But it isn't always 100% accurate.

If you are having trouble with the Outlook mail client flagging some emails as spam even though those emails are from a trusted source you may want to whitelist the source email address. In this quick tutorial, we will guide you through each and every step.

Option 1: Add the address to your contacts

To tell Outlook that you want to receive messages from a certain email address, simply add the address to your contacts. This will indicate that the sender is in fact trusted by you and you want to receive their messages. Unfortunately, it does not guarantee that those messages won't go to spam ever again, but it is a good practice.

In the Outlook desktop app:

1. Open the email, whose sender you want to add to your contacts
2. Hover over the email address of the sender (info-box will appear)
3. In the box, click on the three dots icon (it will open a dropdown menu)
4. Click on the Add to Outlook Contacts
5. In the newly opened window, fill out the optional form and click the Save & Close option in the toolbar on the top-left corner

In the Outlook web app:

1. Open the email, whose sender you want to add to your contacts
2. Hover over the email address of the sender (info-box will appear)
3. In the box, click on the three dots icon (it will open a dropdown menu)
4. Click on the Add to Contacts
5. In the newly opened window, fill out the optional form and click the Create option in the toolbar on the top-left corner

Option 2: Add the email address to safe-senders

The best option is to add the email address to safe-senders. This will ensure that all further conversations won’t be marked as junk.

In the Outlook desktop app:

1. In the Home tab, switch Ribbon to show more options and click on the Junk
2. Select Junk E-mail Options
3. Navigate to the Safe-senders tab
4. Click the Add button
5. Enter the email address into the field and hit OK
6. Close the Junk E-mail options by hitting OK

In the Outlook web app:

1. Click the settings (cog) icon in the top-right corner
2. Scroll down and click the View All Outlook Settings
3. In the Mail tab, navigate to the Junk Email section
4. Click Add in the Safe senders and domains category
5. Enter the email address into the input field and hit Enter

Got an article suggestion? Let us know

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.