Office 365 / Email Quarantine

Office 365 / Email Quarantine

What is it quarantine?

In Microsoft 365 organizations with mailboxes in Exchange Online or standalone Exchange Online Protection (EOP) organizations without Exchange Online mailboxes, quarantine is available to hold potentially dangerous or unwanted messages.

Both users and admins can work with quarantined messages:

  • Quarantine policies define what users are allowed to do or not do to quarantined messages based on why the message was quarantined (for supported features). Default quarantine policies enforce the historical capabilities as described below. Admins can create and apply custom quarantine policies that define less restrictive or more restrictive capabilities for users, and also turn on quarantine notifications. 

  • How long quarantined messages are held in quarantine before they expire varies based on why the message was quarantined. The features that quarantine messages and their corresponding retention periods are described in the following table:

    Quarantine reasonDefault retention periodCustomizable?Comments
    Messages quarantined by anti-spam policies: spam, high confidence spam, phishing, high confidence phishing, or bulk.15 days:
    • In the default anti-spam policy.
    • In anti-spam policies that you create in PowerShell.

    30 days in anti-spam policies that you create in the Microsoft 365 Defender portal.

    YesYou can configure (lower) this value in anti-spam policies. For more information, see the Retain spam in quarantine for this many days (QuarantineRetentionPeriod) setting in Configure anti-spam policies.
    Messages quarantined by anti-phishing policies: spoof intelligence in EOP; user impersonation, domain impersonation, or mailbox intelligence in Defender for Office 365.30 daysYesThis retention period is also controlled by the Retain spam in quarantine for this many days (QuarantineRetentionPeriod) setting in anti-spam policies. The retention period that's used is the value from the first matching anti-spam policy that the recipient is defined in.
    Messages quarantined by anti-malware policies (malware messages).15 daysNo
    Messages quarantined by Safe Attachments policies in Defender for Office 365 (malware messages).15 daysNo
    Messages quarantined by mail flow rules: the action is Deliver the message to the hosted quarantine (Quarantine).30 daysNo
    Files quarantined by Safe Attachments for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Microsoft Teams (malware files).15 daysNo

    When a message expires from quarantine, you can't recover it.


EXAMPLE:



How do I access my quarantine?


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