How to Whitelist an Email in Outlook 365: Mastering Email Management!

What is Email Whitelisting?

Whitelisting is the process of adding an email address or domain to a trusted senders list. If an email address is whitelisted, an email client(Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, etc) will automatically recognize selected senders and ensure their emails are not treated as spam. This is necessary for scenarios like when you waiting for a crucial message from your client or colleague, and it has arrived in the spam folder. In that case, whitelisting will help by ensuring every email will arrive in the primary mailbox and never move to the Junk folder.

Why does email whitelisting matter?

Without whitelisting, crucial emails are accidentally moved to spam leading to delays in critical information. Email whitelisting is the most preferred way to prevent this type of issue by ensuring every crucial email never ends up in a spam or junk folder. 

Why Whitelist Email in Office 365?

Before moving to the solution of the query i.e. how to whitelist an email in Outlook 365, it is important to know why users want to whitelist email in Outlook 365:

1. Avoiding Spam Filters: Outlook 365 has built-in filters to move suspicious emails directly to the spam or junk folder. However, sometimes this filter won’t work efficiently and treats crucial emails as spam. Therefore, to avoid this type of issue, using the whitelisting option is mandatory to ensure every trusted sender email will arrive in the inbox.
2. Ensuring Important Communications: Whitelisting confirms that every critical information by selected senders will never go unnoticed. 
3. Time-Saving: If you receive spam emails regularly and find it frustrating to deal with them. Then, whitelisting will help in this by moving suspicious emails to the Junk folder and critical emails to the inbox automatically.
4. Business Productivity: For business users, whitelisting helps to receive every email from their partners, suppliers, or clients, ensures they won’t be blocked, and receive crucial information on time in their inbox.

How to Whitelist an Email in Outlook 365?

Outlook 365 offers several methods to whitelist an email address, domain, or even organization-wide whitelisting. The following sections describe all the techniques with accurate instructions to whitelist email in Office 365. You can opt for any of them depending on your needs, whether you want to whitelist an email address or domain. So, let’s dive into them:

Method 1: Add an Email to the Safe Senders List

Adding an email address to the Safe Senders List is the most preferred and straightforward procedure. To do so, follow the below steps:

• Open Outlook > click on the Settings Gear icon > View all Outlook settings.
• Afterward, choose Mail > Junk email.
• Under Safe Senders and Domains, click on Add.
• Now, you have to type the email address of the sender to whitelist. For example, email address: example@example.com & domain: @example.com.
• Hit Save.

After the completion of this “email to the Safe Senders list” procedure, any email of the selected sender moves directly to the inbox. However, this approach is suited for individuals, not for organizations. To answer the question i.e. how to whitelist an email in Outlook 365 across the organization, go through the next method.

Method 2: Use Outlook 365 Admin Center for Organization-wide Whitelisting

Office 365 Admins who are looking to whitelist email in Office 365 for the entire organization simultaneously can opt for this technique. For the same, instructions are as follows:

• Sign in to the Microsoft 365 Admin Center via admin credentials.
• Expand Admin Centers > Exchange to open the Exchange Admin Center.
• Under the Mail flow section, select Rules.
• Hit the + icon to create a new rule.
• Select Create a new rule.
• Name the rule (Whitelist Specific Email Addresses).
• Under Apply this rule if…, choose The sender is or The sender’s domain is.
• Enter the email address to the whitelist. 
• Under Do the following > Modify the message properties > choose Set the spam confidence level (SCL) to -1 (which indicates the message is not spam).
• Click Save to activate it.

Method 3: Whitelist an Email via the Email Settings

For individual users, this is a hands-on approach to answer the query i.e. how to whitelist an email in Outlook 365. In this, you just go to the spam folder and mark the email as Not Junk, and that data automatically moves to your inbox. Detailed steps are given below:

• Open the Junk Email folder in Outlook 365.
• Search the email to whitelist.
• Right-click that email and select Mark as not junk.
• Outlook will prompt to add the sender to the Safe Senders list (if the sender is new).
• Click Yes, if you want to whitelist email in Office 365.

Method 4: Microsoft 365 Defender

Microsoft 365 Defender is a service used to protect organizations’ data from cyber threats, malware attacks, unauthorized access, etc. Defender for Office 365 will also help in whitelisting the email addresses. Curious to understand how? Let’s understand:

• In the Microsoft 365 Defender > Policies and Rules > Threat Policies.
• Now, open the Anti-Spam policies.
• In the flyout window, click ‘Edit allowed and blocked senders > Manage sender(s).’
• Click ‘Add senders > Done > Save.

Now, we have all the answers to the query i.e. how to whitelist an email in Outlook 365. But what if you want to remove the whitelist? Don’t worry in the next section we will learn the same.

How to Unwhitelist or Remove an Email from Safe Senders List?

Sometimes you want to remove an email address or domain from the whitelist. To do so, we discuss the step-by-step instructions given below for removing it from the Safe Senders list:

1. Open Junk Email settings.
2. Search for the email address or domain in the Safe Senders and Domains list > Trash.
3. Save the settings after removal. 

That’s all! Now, the selected email address is removed from the Safe Senders list. To whitelist email in Office 365 again you have to follow the same methods mentioned previously.

Troubleshooting: Common Issues with Email Whitelisting

As we learned above how to whitelist an email in Outlook 365? Still, after completing the whitelisting, most of the users faced issues like selected emails still ending up in the spam folder. Likewise, there are more common issues related to the same, we learn all of them and solutions to solve them:

• Emails from Whitelist Senders Still Go to Junk: This issue happens when another filter is working whether Outlook 365 built-in or third-party. So, check the spam filters in Outlook 365, and remove the rule if any.
• Whitelisting Doesn’t Work for Some Domains: This issue persists when a domain is on Microsoft’s blocked lists. To resolve this issue, contact Microsoft support for further assistance. 
• Spam Filter Updates: Occasionally, Microsoft updates its spam filtering algorithms, so it is better to check spam filters and settings after the update. 

Additional tips to optimize whitelist email in Office 365:

• Use the Categories filter of Outlook 365 to organize emails
• Create Custom Folders for organization
• Enable Focused Inbox for prioritization
• Whitelist only verified senders, and check periodically

Time to Wrap Up!

Now we are at the end of our discussion, and I hope you gained the most valuable knowledge about whitelisting email addresses in Outlook 365. Whitelisting emails in Office 365 is a necessary process for organizations as well as individuals. For anyone who wants to maintain an organized email inbox, whitelisting is a go-to option. In this complete guide, we learned how to whitelist an email in Outlook 365, how to remove a whitelist email in Office 365, best practices, troubleshooting tips, etc. In short, we covered everything you need to know about the same.