back to article Outlook more like 'look out!' as Microsoft email decides everything is spam today

Microsoft is having a bad time this week. First it was Teams, and now Outlook has begun treating pretty much every email as spammy nonsense. We hope it is a touching Terry Jones tribute. We fear it might be titsuppery of the highest order. A Register reader got in touch this morning (not through Microsoft's email service) to …

  1. RockBurner

    Outgoing or Incoming?

    I've been having issue with MS marking EVERY SODDING EMAIL I RECEIVE as spam for the past few months, and much, much worse in the past few weeks.

    Luckily I only use outlook for personal stuff - but I seriously hope I'm not missing out on that Lottery win notification!

    As per usual - the help-staff are utterly useless.

    1. DougMac

      Re: Outgoing or Incoming?

      I've had to disable the SPAM filter on my company Office365 because it was catching way too many false positives, and not catching the actual spam.

      1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Outgoing or Incoming?

        Hasve you thought of renaming your Spam folder as Inbox?

        Icon - No charge you just owe me a beer, next time you see me.

      2. Pirate Dave Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: Outgoing or Incoming?

        Yeah, we had a rash of this in our tenant back in mid-December. It was labeling emails from vendors and customers as "High-Confidence Phish" and shoving them into the Quarantine. I opened a ticket with MS about it, who said "Oh, looks like somebody changed your spam filtering rules on the 17th". To which I responded "I can promise you, no one here touched our spam rules", and later that day, the problem stopped. I still think they tweaked something too hard in EOP in mid-December but aren't owning-up to it.

      3. John_3_16

        Re: Outgoing or Incoming?

        LOL - Have been complaining to them (M$) for years about their filters & rules. Nothing has ever worked logically for me. Rules to block or move simply were/are ignored. Rules to allow or trash did/do just the opposite.

        In Dec 2019 I was completely blocked for 2 months before being permitted access to my account. 8 weeks equaled a collection of over 1300 pieces of spam, phish & porn offerings mixed with legitimate mail sent to JUNK by their (M$) server filters. Have felt for some time that these renegade servers belong to M$. They are completely blocked by yahoo.com & gmail.com. 2 or 3 junk a month & once blocked I never see them again. Same for the good email. It goes where I want it to go.

        No. I will not be moving to any other M$ software or OS'es. Linux & Win 7 for now. Future is at least 3 years away. Then I will decide again based on conditions current to 2023.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Outgoing or Incoming?

      "marking EVERY SODDING EMAIL I RECEIVE as spam"

      It usually is.

  2. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    It's not serious?

    It was probably just this morning's update that cause the problem, don't worry they will get it fixed and move the bug somewhere else in the next update. The official line is that software applications are so reliable these days because they are updated regularly, but what does that tell you about the quality of the code?

    Brendan Behan quote updated for the modern world, "I have never seen a situation so dismal that a software update couldn't make it worse."

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now I understand why Outlook for Android...

    ... is now showing the "junk email" folder using the same view of "inbox"....

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Trollface

    Yay for single points of failure !

    Isn't it just grand to know that, after years and years, and millions, if not billions, spent globally in companies to manage their own email, they've now abandoned all that for the <cough> convenience of cloud mail, and they're back to square one ?

    Technology is wonderful, really.

    1. aregross
      Thumb Up

      Re: Yay for single points of failure !

      I'm so glad I'm not an IT Manager anymore.... I like what hair I have left!

      1. Sven Coenye
        FAIL

        Re: Yay for single points of failure !

        Or sysadmin for that matter. I went back to being a developer a year ago when I found myself starting to use the BOFH columns as a manual.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Yay for single points of failure !

          You're telling me they're not?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: Yay for single points of failure !

      > they're back to square one

      You forgot to use trendy web parlance: they're back to square 1.0

      1. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
        Joke

        Re: Yay for single points of failure !

        No no no, modern web parlance would have to coin a new word for such rumbiculations.

        I propose "Back to rectanguloid 1.0"

        1. herman

          Re: Yay for single points of failure !

          Careful now. Rectanguloid was patented by Apple.

  5. Alan J. Wylie

    Windows Search is down, too.

    Windows Search down for many

    1. My-Handle

      Re: Windows Search is down, too.

      Well that's a blessing. Usually it just spits a whole load of irrelevant Bing search results at me rather than the file I actually want to find.

    2. Amentheist
      Trollface

      Re: Windows Search is down, too.

      That sounds more like a out of schedule improvement update

    3. chivo243 Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Windows Search is down, too.

      Here I thought I had buggy installs of Win10! Been battling niggly issues all week, now the search didn't work either!

      Again, missing the middle finger Icon for M$!!

      1. Adrian 4

        Re: Windows Search is down, too.

        Are you suggesting that there are installs of Win 10 that aren't buggy ?

        How do you get them ?

        1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
          Windows

          Re: Windows Search is down, too.

          It works great for me. Maybe it's a PEBKAC issue.

        2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: Windows Search is down, too.

          How do you get them ?

          Rebooted from a Devuan install CD :-)

    4. hplasm
      Facepalm

      Re: Windows Search is down, too.

      Are you certain? It can take some considerable time before it decides it cant find things that are right in front of it...

    5. John_3_16

      Re: Windows Search is down, too.

      Lol - Middle of Feb 2020 now & I did not even notice. DuckDuckGo did not falter al all. When they were college kids working out of their garage it was good, even reliable. Now it is this hugely fat greedy giant that has trouble wiping its butt. They hide their money in "war chests" & let their forums solve the "tits up" issues.

      If I were in business they are the last company I would consider for needed tech.

  6. Dan 55 Silver badge

    Nice naming, Microsoft

    Once again we don't know if it's Outlook the client, Outlook connected to an Office 365 mailbox, or the Outlook formally known as Hotmail unless we start reading the bug report itself.

    1. Korev Silver badge

      Re: Nice naming, Microsoft

      Elreg's Headline didn't help much either, although popping a .com on the end would have meant a less-good headline :-)

  7. seanf

    Titsuppery

    "We hope it is a touching Terry Jones tribute. We fear it might be titsuppery of the highest order."

    I am pretty sure Terry Jones would approve of the word "titsuppery". Pure pythonesqueness.

  8. Big Al 23

    Lookout for Outlook !

    Thankfully Outlook is no longer available.

  9. Pointer2null

    Probably the most accurate it's ever been

    Probably the most accurate it's ever been, at least as far as my corporate inbox is concerned lol

  10. hitmouse

    They're aiming for parity with GMail which insists on labelling many of my subcriptions as spam despite having the sender in my address, explicit rules saying that they are never to be labelled as spam, and finally, clicking "Not spam" on each item for months, if not years.

    I'm not alone in this, read comments at:

    * https://www.jotform.com/help/404-How-to-Prevent-Emails-from-Landing-in-Gmail-s-Spam-Folder

    * https://www.askvg.com/fix-gmail-marks-your-important-emails-as-spam/

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    for some reason...

    ...Outlook on Android decided this morning that I had to log back into all of my email addresses on Gmail.

  12. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Spotted the problem

    Outlook and O-365.

    Delete both of those and you'll be right as rain.

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