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  • How to Whitelist a Safe Sender’s Email Address in Outlook

How to Whitelist a Safe Sender’s Email Address in Outlook

December 30, 2022 / Dave Taylor / Outlook & Office 365 Help / No Comments

Hey Dave, on Outlook, my banking info, balance and whatnot always go into the junk folder. I always have to move it to the inbox manually. How do I fix that so email messages from my bank are automatically added to my inbox?

A decade ago, referring to “Outlook” meant the program, but nowadays there’s an excellent Web-based version of Microsoft Outlook that has become my preferred way to interact with my email. No downloads, no worries about keeping the program up to date, no malware issues, just a URL and a program that has zero additional resource requirements on your computer. Even better, you can access it from anywhere, even if you’re far away from your home or office PC.

This is a roundabout way to say that I no longer have Microsoft Outlook, the separate program, since I don’t need it. As a result, this tutorial is going to focus on Outlook.com, which I expect you’re also using at this point. If not, the program should have a fairly similar settings organization.

MARK A SPECIFIC EMAIL ADDRESS AS A SAFE SENDER

Outlook uses what’s generally called in the industry “a whitelist” that it refers to as a “safe sender”. The easiest way to add someone to your safe sender list is to right-click (or control-click, if you’re on a Mac) on the message. A menu appears…

microsoft outlook.com safe sender - right-click context menu

As you can see, there are a lot of choices for this context menu. You might think that “Categorize” would let you specify it should be i the category ‘safe senders’, but no, that’s how you tag messages by color. Report? Almost:

microsoft outlook.com safe sender - context menu - report

This is how you can report a message as junk or phishing, but it’s not quite what you seek. Instead, try the unintuitive option of “Block”:

microsoft outlook.com safe sender - block sender

Choose “Never block sender” and, as the program will confirm momentarily, you’ll have added the sender to the Safe Sender list.

microsoft outlook.com safe sender - add to safe sender list?

Easy enough. Click “OK” and you’re done.

MANAGING YOUR SAFE SENDERS LIST

Once you’ve added a sender to your list, how do you later manage who’s on the list, remove people who, perhaps, have violated your trust, and add additional email messages like that used by your bank? It’s all through Settings. This time, click on the gear icon on the top right to bring up a different menu:

microsoft outlook.com safe sender - settings and configuration appearance menu

There are lots of useful settings and configuration options on this menu, actually, so it’s worth spending a minute or two considering each option. Ready to proceed? Click on “View all Outlook settings” at the very bottom of the menu, then navigate to Mail > Junk email to find the below:

microsoft outlook.com safe sender - safe senders settings manage

I’ve redacted the entries on my own configuration, but from this point you can see both the Blocked senders and domains and Safe senders and domains. Notice that phrasing too; “and domains”. This means you could whitelist “@askdavetaylor.com”, for example, by adding it to the safe senders section, or block all email from “@scamshop.com” by adding it to Blocked senders.

You can also “whitelist” a specific email address, like “notifications@mybank.com”, by clicking on “+ Add” on this page too. Now ya know. Good luck and remember phishing attacks and scammers could still fake a sender email address so please remain skeptical and vigilant with those bank email messages anyway.

Pro Tip: I’ve been using and writing about Microsoft’s Office Suite for many years. Please check out my Outlook help library for plenty of useful tutorials, as well as additional Office 365 help pages! Thanks.

About the Author: Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world since the early days of the Internet. Author of over 20 technical books, he runs the popular AskDaveTaylor.com tech help site. You can also find his gadget reviews on YouTube and chat with him on Twitter as @DaveTaylor.

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
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