How to report junk and phishing emails in Outlook?

Author Amanda Li Last modified 2025-04-08

the screenshot of reporting jun and phishing emails

You may notice that there are lots of spam or phishing emails passing through Microsoft’s filters, while some legitimate emails end up in your junk or spam folder. To help Microsoft improve the filters and prevent this from happening in the future, please do not ignore or delete the spam emails. Instead, report the junk and phishing emails to Microsoft with one of the methods listed below.

Note: Before you report junk or phishing emails in Outlook, make sure you understand how to spot a junk or phishing email.

Report junk and phishing emails to Microsoft in Outlook on windows

Report junk and phishing emails to Microsoft in Outlook.com

Report junk and phishing emails to Microsoft with a message

Report junk and phishing emails to Microsoft in Outlook on windows

1. On the "Home" tab, in the "Add-ins" group, click on the "Get Add-ins" icon. Alternatively, click on the "Store" icon in earlier Outlook versions. See screenshots:

steps of reporting junk and phishing emails to Microsoft in Outlook on windows

Note: If you cannot see either of the icons in your Outlook ribbon, please go to "File" > "Customize Ribbon". If you see "Get Add-ins" or "Store" on the left, create a group first by clicking on "New Group" and then move the "Get Add-ins" command to the right side.

2. In the pop-up "ADD-INS" page, search for “report message”, and then click on the "Add" button on the "Report Message" add-in.

3. Click on "Get Started".

4. You will see a notification which tells you how to access the add-in as shown below. Close the page when finished reading.

5. Select the email that you want to report as junk or phishing. Click on "Report Message", and then select "Junk" or "Phishing" on the drop-down menu to report the junk or phishing email to Microsoft.

6. A "Report Message" dialog box will then pop up, click on "Report" if you want to send a copy of this message to Microsoft to help the research and improvement of email protection technologies. Otherwise, click on "Cancel".

Note:

After you report a message as phishing, it only reports the sender but does not block them from sending you messages in the future. To block the sender, you can add them to your blocked sender's list. For more information, please see the tutorial: How To Block Or Unblock Senders In Outlook?
The experience you click on "Get Add-ins" on the ribbon could vary. If it opens an "AppSource" page in your browser, please follow the instructions on the page to get the "Report Message" add-in.

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Report junk and phishing emails to Microsoft in Outlook.com

If you have trouble configuring the add-in in Outlook on the desktop, you can log in to your account in outlook.com, and do as follows:

1. Select the email that you want to mark as junk or phishing.

2. Click on "Junk" on the ribbon, and then select "Junk" or "Phishing" as you need.

steps of reporting junk and phishing emails to Microsoft in Outlook.com

3. If you select "Junk", the message will be moved to Junk folder. If you select "Phishing", a dialog will pop up as shown below, please click on "Report".

Report junk and phishing emails to Microsoft with a message

To report junk or phishing messages to Microsoft, you can attach the messages and send them directly to Microsoft as well. Please do as follow:

1. Create a new message.

2. Select the emails that you want to report as junk or phishing, and then drag them into the new blank email.

steps of reporting junk and phishing emails to Microsoft in Outlook.com style=

3. To report the emails as junk, copy and paste junk@office365.microsoft.com in the recipient box; To report the emails as phishing, copy and paste phish@office365.microsoft.com in the recipient box.

4. Click on "Send" to report the junk or phishing emails.

How To Spot Phishing Emails In Outlook?

Many people see phishing and junk emails as the same, but as a matter of the fact, although all phishing is considered junk or spam, but not all junk is phishing. The main difference between the two is in the intent of the sender. The sender of most junk emails aims at hawking products and services by sending unsolicited emails to bulk lists. While phishing is a scam which aims at tricking recipients into sharing sensitive data or infecting victims’ systems with malware.

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Sometimes, in Outlook, you may receive junk emails from some strangers which annoy you. In this article, I introduce the method to block or prevent receiving emails from some specific senders in Outlook.

How To Automatically Delete Spam Or Junk Emails In Outlook?

For those spam or junk emails, you may prefer to delete them automatically instead of keeping them in the Junk Email folder in Outlook. This article introduces two methods of deleting spam emails in Outlook.

How To Configure Junk E-Mail Filter Settings In Outlook?

Every day when we launch our Outlook, we always receive all kinds of disturbing advertisement mails which are called spam messages while receive useful information. We need to manually delete the spam one from the inbox. How to avoid receiving them? Fortunately, outlook provides us with the function of junk email filter which can filter the disturbing mails into the junk e-mail folder. Also, you can configure the junk e-mail settings according to your needs. Please look at the following instructions.

How To Mark An Email Message As Not Junk Or Spam In Outlook?

When you are using Outlook Junk E-mail filter function for filtering junk emails, you will find that sometimes the normal one is treated as spam and filtered to the Junk E-mail folder automatically. Based on that, you need to restore the mistake filtering one to the original folder which it was previously located. Dragging the junk email to the folder directly is not a good way because sometimes you are not sure which folder is the original folder of it. With this article, you will learn how to mark an email message as not junk and move it to the original folder automatically.