Outlook rejecting emails from certain senders

Question

Outlook rejecting emails from certain senders

Annie Male 0

For over a year now, I have been having an issue where my @live.co.uk email address just won't receive emails from certain email addresses - this varies from personal email addresses, to commercial ones. I don't receive order confirmations, personal enquiries, it's not discriminative to one type of email sender. I cannot find anywhere to contact a human at Microsoft for support about this. Anyone have any insights?

Moved from: Windows for home | Other | Email and communications

Hornblower409 14,425 Reputation points

2026-09-08T02:29:56.28+00:00

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1 answer

Your answer

Hornblower409 14,425 Reputation points

2026-09-08T02:29:56.28+00:00

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Click the [No] button on the "Was this answer helpful?" or "Did this solve your problem?" bar under the answer. If there is a [Reject] button visible, click that too. This may get a human forum user to respond to your question. But human participation remains voluntary. Community members and moderators answer only those question they choose to engage with.

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Answer 1

If specific senders are being rejected before messages reach the mailbox, the most common cause is a problem on the sender side rather than a block, rule, or storage issue in Outlook.com. This is especially true when the sender receives a bounce or non-delivery report.

Use this checklist in Outlook.com:

Check Junk Email and move any valid message back with Mark as not junk.
Check Other and make sure no filters are hiding messages.
Check Filter > Sort > Date so messages are not just appearing out of order.
Check whether email forwarding is enabled.
Check Settings > Mail > Junk email for blocked senders/domains.
Check for mail rules that could be moving or deleting messages.

Important detail: in Outlook.com, blocking a sender does not stop mail at the service edge; it moves matching messages to Junk Email. If messages never appear anywhere, they may be getting rejected before delivery.

If a sender can share the bounce message they receive, that usually identifies the cause:

If it shows SPF fail or says the sender domain does not meet authentication requirements, the sender must fix their email authentication configuration.
If it shows 5.7.511 Access denied or indicates a banned sending IP, the sender should use Microsoft’s sender delist process.
If it shows 451 4.7.550 Access denied, please try again later, Microsoft 365 has temporarily throttled traffic from the sender IP while it is being evaluated.

For senders that keep changing addresses or hiding the real sender address, two Outlook.com actions can help:

Create an Inbox rule to match common words and move those messages to Deleted Items.
View the internet message headers of a received message to find the real sender address, then add that address to the blocked senders list if needed.

If no error is visible in Outlook.com for a missing message, Microsoft’s guidance is to ask the sender to review sender support information. That is the best next step for commercial senders, schools, utilities, and other organizations whose mail is being rejected.

For contacting support, Outlook.com support is available from the Help menu in Outlook.com. If that does not work, sign in to Outlook.com first, then select the ? at the top of the window to open Help and support options.