Sending, receiving, and organizing email in Outlook.com
For Outlook.com/Hotmail, the most relevant checks are these:
- Check the Other tab, Junk Email folder, and Junk Email settings. Important messages such as app codes can be filtered away from the main inbox.
- Check whether messages are just sorted oddly. In Outlook.com, select Filter > Sort > Date to restore chronological order.
- Check whether email forwarding is enabled.
- Check whether any email rules are moving or hiding messages.
- If a specific sender’s messages are not arriving and there is no visible error, ask that sender to review Sender Support in Outlook.com.
- If sending fails, check whether:
- the message has an attachment larger than 25 MB,
- there is a non-delivery report (NDR) explaining the failure,
- the recipient address has a typo,
- the recipient mailbox is full,
- the recipient server has issues,
- the message was blocked by the recipient’s spam filters.
- If a message is in Sent Items but never reaches the recipient, try sending a simple test message with:
- no attachment,
- no signature,
- one recipient only. If signatures are enabled, remove the signature and send again.
- If only some senders cannot reach the mailbox, the problem can be on the sender’s side. A sender’s mail server or IP reputation can cause Microsoft to reject their messages even while other mail still arrives.
- Check the account itself. If the password was changed recently, update it. Also check whether the account was temporarily blocked because of unusual sign-in activity.
- If sign-in problems are involved, use the Microsoft account sign-in helper.
If none of the above resolves it, use Outlook.com support from the Help menu, enter the issue, then go to Still need help? and select Yes.
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