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(This post was first published in 2010. It's obvious from the number of hits this page gets that people's inboxes are still overflowing. We thought we'd share it again to help you out.)
Hi, I am Roby Kurian, Product Manager for Outlook. How often do you ask yourself, “Where’s that message?”
Whether you are a filer (you keep messages carefully organized in folders) or a piler (you keep all of your messages in your Inbox), these three tips can help you find that elusive message.
Personally, I am more of a piler — I have created folders and use Outlook rules to direct some messages automatically to those folders. But most of my work messages stay in my Inbox. Leave a comment below and let us know if you are a filer or piler.
Now let’s talk about the main topic of this blog — search. We made great improvements to search performance in Outlook 2010. Here are three scenarios and strategies to find the email you are searching for.
Instant Search is always a great place to start. If you’re looking for a message from Dan Wilson about some TPS Reports, just type “Dan Wilson TPS Reports” into the Instant Search box. The message from Dan appears.
Sometimes, there might be too many results matching your Instant Search criteria. For example, you’re looking for a message from your manager, and you have 200 messages from him or her in your Inbox (or 2000, if you’re a piler like me and your manager sends as many messages as mine does). In this case, the Search Tools ribbon comes to the rescue. As soon as you click in the Instant Search box, the Search Tools ribbon automatically appears.
Fine tune the search with any additional information you have about the message you’re looking for. If you know part of the subject, click Subject, and type the subject. If you know the message had an attachment, click Has Attachments. There are many ways to refine your search by clicking More in the Refine 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.
If you find yourself repeating the same search over and over, you might want to create a Search Folder. A Search Folder is a virtual folder that provides a view of all email items that match specific search criteria. For example, if you regularly search for emails that are more than 1 MB, you can create a Search Folder. Then, the next time you want to find those large messages, just open the Search Folder you created. It’s always up-to-date with the items that match that Search Folder’s criteria.
You can learn more about Search Folders at Office.com.
If you’re using Outlook 2010, leave a comment about your experience with search compared to previous versions of Outlook.
Roby Kurian Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Outlook
More info on Outlook Search:
Better Searching in Outlook 2010
Outlook Best Practices: Search foldersFind a message or item with Instant Search
Best Practices for Outlook 2010
Comments: (83) Collapse
Can you elaborate on how search works in conjunction with Personal Archive folders? I've heard some complaints about Outlook locking up when trying to search from a very slow connection. Is it possible to search only the cached data in these situations?
I love the new search features in Outlook 2010. They have already saved me quite a bit of time. Search folders, less so, as I can never seem to set the proper criteria to deliver the results I need. Something as simple as "Mail I received Today" - looks simple to define, but doesn't seem to work, as I tend to get too few results (3 out of 60). Unread mail works like a champ though - I love it and use it heavily.
The problem I have is that the indexer is invariably far behind, and stuff will not show up for days or weeks that should be there when I search for it.
@Scott – I believe you are asking about Online Archive folders. In most cases, Outlook searches your folders using Windows Search and a local index of your mail. Since the Online Archive is never downloaded to your computer, searches for the Online Archive are run by sending your search query to the Microsoft Exchange Server. This can take longer than a local search, especially on a slow connection. Searches in the “current folder” or “subfolder” scope in your mailbox should not be affected by this. If you want to disable searching your Online Archive during All Mail Item searches, on the search contextual ribbon tab go to “Search Tools” and under “Locations To Search” uncheck your archive. @Timsed – I’m glad you like the new features! You can create a search folder for mail received today, although you are correct that it’s not one of the ready-to-use options. In order to set this up you need to select “custom” when creating a new search folder, and use the “advanced” tab for the criteria. Find the field “received” under “fields -> frequently used fields.” If you need help please let us know in our forums at answers.microsoft.com. @Devin – This is not normal behavior for the indexer. If you continue to experience slow or incomplete indexing please let us know in our forums at answers.microsoft.com where you can get support from other users and Microsoft support. Thanks for posting!
Josh Meisels, Outlook Program Manager
I'm the same as you - I have some rules set up i.e. emails from certain people go into their specific folder, or emails related to a particular event I'm setting up go into a specific folder - but other than that I leave everything in my inbox and once a month I delete everything that's older than 3 months. And I also regularly use the search folder for big items and remove the attachments or something cuz my Outlook can only hold so much storage. The search feature is awesome though! I can usually find what I'm looking for quite easily!Thanks!
I am unable to get my email addresses out of Outlook (MS Office 2000) since I upgraded to Windows 7. Please help me get to them.
Thanks
I am trying to import my hughes.net mail to outlook and can't figure out how. can someone help me?
I have used this search method many times without any problem, but today when I try to search something, the reasult is limited in the recent email only, all old emails can not be found (but I can find it manually), do you know what is the reason ?
some maps diappeared even from archive. i have a external backup system.
However this file is a .pst
how can i open or put it back? Karin
A great place to get answers for technical support questions is http://answers.microsoft.com/. Roby Kurian Senior Product Manager, Microsoft Outlook
I find Outlook search in Vista or Windows 7 very fast and good; so much less so in XP that I use a different indexer to find my e-mails. One feature I would very much like to see is the ability to categorize an outgoing e-mail. I can't find the way to do that in Outlook 2010 and believe the only way I can do that is to go into my Sent Items folder and categorize it later. That's inconvenient and I often forget, and so categories don't always work for me the way I'd like them to.
Since I have installed Office 2010, I cannot open any power point, word or excel documents that I receive in outlook even though I save them to a hard disk. How do I correct this?
The biggest issue is with the indexer... It just takes forever, and it starts from zero every time you close and open Outlook. I had to go with an external addon to do the indexing and searching.
How do I utilise OUTLOOK as my email facility without the need to incoporate M/Soft Office products I neither need nor due to ongoing disabilities, can nagivate??
your software very perfect level and quick
Comments: (loading) Collapse