Better Searching in Outlook 2010

The mail search, although slow, is pretty much ok. But, the contact search is awful, please let me search in all fields! sometimes I don't remember the name but remember the company and Outlook can't find it. It's 2012! Also it would be cool if I can find by email or phone number.

What Outlook version are you using exactly?  Because everything you described here /is/ possible with Outlook 2010. I heavily use these features to get all contacts from a certain place. Heck; only a few weeks ago did I use this exact feature to check which of my friends was using gmail (xxx@gmail.com) to warn them about the upcoming privacy policy change.

All I did was click my contacts, hit control-e and type "gmail.com" (no "" of course). And wham!

Unfortunately this is indeed a non-existent option. Outlook 2010 utilizes the 'Windows search' component which doesn't support wildcards or partial searches at the moment. Previously (Outlook 2007 and prior) they used another search engine which could do partials ("wildcards") but at the cost of speed. As such MS has chosen to increase speed which came with a cost; the partials.

To be honest I can't say I ever really felt this option to be missing out but I guess that is also very dependand on the way you use it.

Why not use catagories instead?  Assign your item with a catagory; this makes it much easier to search for them and keep things organized.

Does anyone know how to do a saved search across multiple POP3 accounts (multiple PST files) such that I can get a unified view of all my unread mail in one place?

Does the Search Contextual Tab in Outlook 2010 require an Exchange account? I am using  a POP3 account from my ISP and I don't see the Search Contextual Tab.

I still find that many users who are using Outlook 2010 do not know how useful the Search feature is.

We had several users on our blog complaining that Search was not working well for them. In almost all cases it was fixed by getting Windows (not Office) to reindex the emails.

We did a blog post on how to do this a while ago as users were having trouble locating where this could be done.

www.standss.com/.../fixing-search-problems-outlook-2007-outlook-2010

I look forward to learning more.

Regards

Sanjay Singh

Tips on Making Outlook Work for Your Business

http://blog.standss.com

I find that while email folders get searched quickly, Outlook 2010 Search is very slow when working with Tasks.

Is there any way to speed this up?

Regards

Sanjay Singh

Tips on Making Outlook Work for Your Business

http://blog.standss.com

Hello, This is not a comment on searchability though it does work really well in this version of outlook :-)

I am a heavy user of Outlook but in a India. I have to work with my colleagues in Philippines, India, United States, Mexico and Canada simultaneously. One feature that helps me is the "Work Time" feature in Outlook - Tools - Options - Calender as it shows you your and their working hours in the calender along with other information. However it does not allow me the flexibility to show my exact working hours as they go beyond 11:59 PM. I hope it's a small fix and you can provide a small patch or update. I am sure there are millions of such users whose work hours go beyond a normal day. Pls help.

I have an annoying problem with Windows Search on Win 7/Outlook 2010.  Search works for most things.  The index has been rebuilt twice, but the problem continues.  We use Office 2010 in our work environment.  I believe the back-end is Exchange 2007.  If I want to find messages that are both “from Smith, Jim” and “to Davis, Mike,” I enter the search using the search tools.  It appears as to be correctly configured and shows: “from:(Smith, Jim) to:(Davis, Mike)”  Rather than return only messages from Jim to Mike, it returns all messages from Jim (even if not to Mike) and all messages to Mike (even from other than Jim).  How can I correct this problem?  Inserting AND doesn’t help, such as:  “from:(Smith, Jim) to:(Davis, Mike)”

If you hit the green "+" button under the Search Tools ribbon that appears when you are in the search bar; you can select one or more "filters" to screen your search request.  the cool thing is that those sub-filters actually stay there for the next / future searches.  So this is very close, if not better than what we had in Office 2007.  

Protip:  You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt+JS+ME when you are clicked into the Search Bar in outlook.

i have a question, if i want to add other user folder to locations to search (search tools > locations to search), how do i do that? is it possible if i got permission to other user folder?

Where is the "ribbon"?   And where is the "Scope group"?

If you are a filer and can’t remember which folder a message is in, don’t forget to select a folder scope in the Scope group on the ribbon. Click All Outlook Items to expand your search to more mail folders or to include all folders including your calendar, contacts, and tasks.

Search in Outlook email.  I do a lot of searches each day at work in my email.  In 2003 version I would search in Inbox, Deleted and Sent and it was very simple.  With 2010 version I cannot figure out a simple way to do this.  I would like to add the "Browse" box which shows those search options on my ribbon.  Can this be done?

Clarification to my below post.  I would search in Inbox, Deleted and Sent all at the same time.