Can't send or receive email in Outlook.com

Important: If your Microsoft cloud storage is full, you cannot send or receive email. Messages sent to you while your storage was full are bounced back to the sender and are unrecoverable. Check your mailbox storage to see what's taking up space. Learn more about recent changes.

If your cloud storage and mailbox are not full, and you can't send or receive email, or can't connect to Outlook.com, check these common causes:

  • If you can't send or receive email, check your account: update your password if it's been changed recently. Your account might also be temporarily blocked because we noticed some unusual sign-in activity. Learn how to unblock your Outlook.com account.

  • If you can't sign in to your account, use the Microsoft account sign-in helper.

  • If a message has an attachment larger than 25 MB, Outlook cannot send the message.

  • Check your Other tab and ensure there are no filters preventing you from seeing all your messages.

  • Check your Junk Email settings and your Junk Email folder. If there are messages that shouldn't have been marked as junk, to move them back to your inbox, right-click each email message and then choose Mark as not junk.

  • Check to see if messages are appearing out of order in the message list. You can restore the message list to chronological order by selecting  The Filter icon. Filter > Sort > Date.

  • If one of your devices isn't sending or receiving email, removing the partnership between the mobile device and your mailbox often fixes sync issues. Learn more.

If these tips don't help, try our interactive troubleshooter below.

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To get support in Outlook.com, click here or select Help on the menu bar and enter your query. If the self-help doesn't solve your problem, scroll down to Still need help? and select Yes.

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