Why is my rule not working

Question

Why do calendar invited end up in my junk email even when I have a rule for all email from sender to go to my in box? Seems regular email is fine just calendar invites from them. They are using gmail and gcal.

Answer 1

Hi @Brad F 

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum. 

Meeting invitations from Gmail or Google Calendar are treated as regular emails by Exchange Online and Outlook. If the junk filter flags an invitation as suspicious, it is delivered to the Junk Email folder before any inbox rules run. This explains why normal emails from the same sender may arrive in your Inbox while calendar invitations end up in Junk.

To help mitigate this issue, try the following steps: 

1.Mark the invitation as safe 
In Outlook, right-click the email > Report > Not junk. This helps train the filter to recognize similar messages as safe in the future. 

2.Add the sender to your Safe Senders list 
In Outlook, click Gear icon (Settings) > Mail > Junk email > Add the sender’s email or domain to your Safe Senders list. This ensures future messages from them bypass the junk filter. 
Note: This works at the mailbox level but does not override tenant-level policies.

3.If you're part of an organization and this issue is happening to multiple people, please contact your IT admin and ask them to: 
-Review message headers for spam verdict (SCL) and authentication results (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, compauth). If authentication fails, ask the sender to correct their Gmail domain setup. This is the most effective long-term fix. 
Reference: SecOps guide for email authentication in Microsoft 365 - Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Micros… 

-If this issue still persists, admins may also consider overrides such as: 

• Adding the sender/domain to Allowed Senders in anti-spam policies. 
• Using the IP Allow List in the default connection filter policy. 
• Creating a mail flow rule in Exchange that sets SCL = -1 for meeting requests only. 

Note:  Microsoft recommends keeping overrides minimal to maintain default security protections. 
Reference: Secure by default in Office 365 - Microsoft Defender for Office 365 | Microsoft Learn.

I hope this information is helpful. 

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