This article explains why Outlook displays a warning banner when you receive emails from external senders.

Overview of the banner

Email received from senders outside of the University will contain a warning banner at the top of the message saying: "CAUTION: This e-mail originated outside the University of Southampton". This banner has a red outline and a white background.

If you have not received many emails (or no email at all previously) from that sender, you will see another banner called "First contact safety tip". It says "You don’t often get email from 'email@domain'. Learn why this is important" and is highlighted with a grey background.  

Banners’ purpose

The purpose of these banners is to: 

• Remind email users to be cautious of opening attachments or following links from external contacts,
• Help to reduce the threat of phishing and malware
• Increase awareness of email security
• Protect all users

Phishing and malware received through email is one of the most common information security threats faced by the University. Nobody is immune from these threats and the banner is designed to maintain awareness of this issue.

Please note: these banners cannot be disabled on a per-user basis.

Emails affected

Any email from a sender outside of the University will show these banners, except for some pre-approved and trusted senders.

If your department uses a third-party email service to send messages that are being tagged with the banner, you can request iSolutions to have the sender considered for adding to the trusted sender list. Raise a ticket with ServiceLine by using our request from..

iSolutions will not whitelist individual senders. If you need to add a sender to the list of safe senders or block them, please read the knowledge base article "Setting up rules in Outlook".

How to change the email’s preview settings

If needed, you can change the email’s preview settings.

Outlook desktop application for Windows

1. Select View from the toolbar
2. Select the Message preview icon
3. From the drop-down menu, select the option that fits better for you.

Outlook desktop application for Apple macOS

1. Select View from the toolbar
2. From the drop-down menu tick or untick the option Show Message Previews.

Outlook Web Access (OWA) accessible from every browser

1. Select View from the toolbar
2. Select Messages
3. Select Message preview
4. From the drop-down menu select the option that fits better for you.

Removing the banner when replying to an external contact

When replying to an external contact, you can remove the banners by deleting the lines from the original message.

Related content

Setting up rules in Outlook

Suspicious emails bounced back to the sender

Reporting Phishing or SPAM messages