What Happens When You Block a Sender in Outlook

What Happens When You Block a Sender in Outlook

Emails are still popular and will be for a long time. This makes it a prime target for spammers, marketers and hackers. All email service providers offer ways to fix this problem and Microsoft Outlook is no different. You can delete these emails or block the sender in Outlook. But do you know what actually happens when you block a sender in Outlook?


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook

This raises important questions: can they still send emails? Can you send them emails? What happens to these emails? And how to unlock them in the future if need be? Well, I am on the same side of the fence and I will try to answer all of these questions below.

Let’s start.

How to block a sender in Outlook

For this explanation, I sent an email from my Gmail account to a Microsoft Outlook account to test the functioning of blocking a sender in Outlook.

In addition, I will be using the web version of Outlook because you cannot block an email address in Outlook mobile – this is outrageous given that most people use smartphones to manage our emails. days.

There are two ways to do this – use the scan option or the unwanted button.

Open the mail you want to block sending in Outlook and click the Scan button.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 1

You will see a bunch of options in the context menu that follows. Select “Move all messages from the Inbox folder and all future messages” and select Deleted Items from the “Move to” drop-down section. This will ask Outlook to automatically move all emails, present and future, to the deleted folder.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 2

However, if you click on the unwanted button, you will see three different options.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 3

You can mark it as spam, phishing, or block the sender directly. Select Block here. You will then be asked for confirmation. Do it.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 4

What happens when you block a sender in Outlook

The email ID you blocked can still send you emails. However, these emails will never reach your inbox – you will never see them. Instead, they will land directly in the Deleted Items folder. This is true when you block a sender or choose to filter that person’s messages, as we saw above. The difference is that in the case of filters, you have more flexibility in choosing the folder where you want to move the mail, and the filter will also apply to existing emails in the inbox. Blocking will only stop future emails but will not affect emails in the inbox.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 10

Why not send the emails to the Junk folder instead? Because it will warn the sender that the email has not been sent. Deleting an email will notify them that the recipient has received the email. But it still won’t appear in the inbox. It is a smart workaround.

Note: Emails from a blocked sender will go to end user quarantine for the enterprise user, but only if the administrator allows it.

Sending / receiving emails from / to blocked sender

The sender of the blocked email address can still send you emails. The only difference is that the email will now be sent directly to the Deleted Items folder instead of the inbox.

You can also send an email to the blocked address.

Who is notified when email is sent or received

The short answer – nobody. You will not be notified when a blocked sender sends you an email. This is what you wanted, right? The sender will also not receive a notification that their e-mail has not been transmitted. And that’s because the email is sent to the deleted items instead of the junk folder.

How to unblock an address in Outlook

Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen to open the settings in the right sidebar and select Show all Outlook settings. Enabling dark mode in Outlook really ruins the right sidebar. Disable dark mode if you don’t see the settings.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 6

Select Junk Mail from the Mail tab.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 5

You can delete any blocked IDs or email addresses from there. After deleting them, all emails from that address will land in your inbox rather than being deleted directly. This is where filters and rules can come in handy. You can create a new folder and then create a filter to move all emails from a particular sender to that folder. That way you won’t have to block the sender and their emails won’t clutter the inbox either.

Block domains in Outlook

You can block an entire domain in Microsoft Outlook. This will filter all emails from any ID ending with that domain name. For example, blocking yahoo.com will block all emails from any Yahoo ID.

Return to the spam settings on the Mail tab and click Add. This is the same location where you unblock email identifiers.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 7

Just enter the domain name and press Enter on your keyboard to block it.


What happens when you block the sender in Outlook 8

You can also enter email addresses in this list.

Block this movement

Spammers and hackers can be persistent. It’s like an endless battle. You keep blocking them and they will continue to find new ways to get these emails to your inbox. War is raging. No wonder apps like Slack are popular with teams around the world claiming to replace email. They have been successful to some extent, but I think all official communications are still done by email.

Use filters and rules to better manage your Microsoft Outlook inbox. You now know what happens when you block a sender in Outlook now. So use it accordingly.

Then:

Do you use Microsoft Outlook 365? Click the link below to learn how to create and manage rules to manage emails efficiently and effortlessly.

Last updated on May 8, 2020

The above article may contain affiliate links that help support Guiding Tech. However, this does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains impartial and authentic.

Leave a Reply