Some Junk mail in Outlook is flagged

Rich 0 Reputation points
2026-08-21T17:22:34.4666667+00:00

Here is wording I recommend pasting into the Microsoft support chat:

I need help with an Outlook mail problem. some Junk/spam messages are being placed in my Outlook account’s Flagged folder, and because my Outlook account is connected to Apple Mail, those messages then appear in Apple Mail under Flagged, but nowhere else in the Apple mail account.

I have checked my Outlook rules and only have five rules, which are spam prevention. I don’t see a rule that should be flagging these messages.

I want to determine what is causing junk mail to be marked as Flagged and stop junk messages from being automatically flagged. Please check whether this is being caused by an Outlook rule, Focused Inbox, junk-mail filtering, or another server-side setting.

Outlook | Web | Outlook.com | Email

3 answers

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  1. Hendrix-V 18,605 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2026-08-22T06:14:09.4033333+00:00

    Hi Rich,

    Since you've already reviewed your Outlook rules and didn't find anything that should be applying flags, it may be helpful to determine whether the flag is being added in Outlook.com itself or after the messages are synchronized to Apple Mail. The reported behavior is that junk/spam messages appear in the Outlook account's Flagged folder and are then reflected in Apple Mail.

    As a quick check, please try these steps:

    • Sign in to Outlook in a web browser.
    • When a new spam message appears, check whether it is already marked as Flagged there.
    • If it is not flagged in Outlook on the web, temporarily remove and re-add the account in Apple Mail or test with another mail client to help isolate whether the flagging is occurring on the client side.

    If the messages are already flagged in Outlook.com before Apple Mail syncs them, it may be worth contacting Outlook.com Support for a closer review of any mailbox-level settings that could be affecting message handling.

    I hope this helps narrow down where the flag is being applied. Let me know if you need further assistance, feel free to ask me by clicking "Add Comment" or "Add Answer" if you cannot add comment so your response will be visible. Thanks for your effort.

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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  2. Betty Bauer 10 Reputation points
    2026-09-01T22:25:27.69+00:00

    I talked with Apple for an hour and no luck resolving the problem of Hotmail junk emails being automatically flagged. How do I talk with Microsoft?

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  3. Hornblower409 14,690 Reputation points
    2026-09-11T23:00:25.68+00:00

    Possible Workaround - If Outlook is using a non-English language

    Following a similar thread on Reddit where user Darewelll posted about a workaround that fixed it for him. Don't know if this applies to the cases reported here.

    my Outlook account was set in French [which seems to cause iOS to not recognize the Junk folder as special, but only as a normal folder]. So everything flagged within that folder was still shown in the "flagged" category, because iOS doesn't realize it's junk. I switched my Outlook account to English (US), and now iOS correctly recognizes the junk folder, and everything flagged within that folder is not shown anymore in the "flagged category". In the end it doesn't really fix the "high importance" junk being flagged but at least it is not shown anymore in my "flagged" category on iOS. This is the discussion who helped me, the guy had the same issue but with the German language.
    [External Non-Microsoft Site] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255817358?sortBy=rank

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