Chapter 10: Save Time Searching

Many of us have a hidden fear of hitting the Delete button. We all fear that one day, we might need that important email and we won’t be able to find it if we delete it. As our inboxes become larger and larger, the fear escalates about what we feel should be deleted. As time passes, our inbox gets out of control.

How can you ever find that important email that was stored days, years, or decades ago? Since Microsoft released the latest updates for the Search feature back in 2019, you can get rid of that fear of losing an email.

This chapter will discuss how to utilize the Outlook Search feature so you will feel confident in keeping any email you think you may need later. However, if your computer is running out of storage space, you might want to use the cloud for your email storage.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following topics:

• Using Search
• Instant search
• Advanced Search
• Settings and indexing
• Search syntax and operators

Using Search

With an Outlook account, you are allowed 15 GB of email storage space per account. Microsoft 365 subscribers are allowed 50 GB of space, but many accounts have more storage than this. I have 1 TB of storage on the cloud with my subscription. With this much storage for our emails, most of us have no reason to delete any of our emails for storage reasons.

In most cases, you can now keep all the emails you want as not only can the cloud manage this, but Outlook’s Search feature has been vastly improved. When I need to search for an old email, I usually find it by simply typing an email ID or topic in the Search box and my email will appear, without using the advanced search feature.

The Search box is at the top of the Outlook window in the title bar, to the right of Quick Access Toolbar, if you have this toolbar docked above the ribbon, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 10.1 – Search box

You can access this from any object with Ctrl + E. When you click in the Search box, on the left, you will see Current Mailbox, which is the default. This indicates that the search will only search in the mailbox that is showing currently, which for most people would be the inbox. To change this, click on the arrow to the right of Current Mailbox and a drop-down menu will appear where you can broaden the search by selecting your preference. If you are not sure where the required email is stored, click on All Mailboxes or All Outlook Items:

Figure 10.2 – Search location options

Search, in my opinion, cannot get any easier than this, but it does, which you will see as we continue. There are two different types of searches you can perform:

• Instant search
• Advanced Search

I will explain these two types of search and you can decide when to use each type depending on your needs at the time.

Instant search

Instant search is the Search box in the title bar of your Outlook window, as shown previously. This Search box is always available, and you don’t have to click any specific area to activate it. It is available in all the Outlook objects, such as you saw previously in Mail, as well as Calendar, People, Tasks, Folders, and Notes. It’s available all the time, no matter what object you are working on, in Outlook 2019 and later as well as Outlook for the web. Older versions of Outlook will have this Search box above the workspace window.

1. Once you click on the Search box, a drop-down menu appears with possible suggestions of what you may be looking for. This box will consistently change as you continue to enter your desired search. The following figure shows the three sections that might appear if items are available to search for in these areas. In this example, when I click in the box, my previous search terms, as well as people I have previously emailed, appear in this drop-down box, and you may see Recently Used Actions, Suggested Searches, and Suggested Actions show as suggestions as well. This list is dynamic and will change as necessary.

Figure 10.3 – Drop-down search menu

2. The next step in finding your item is to simply type in what you are looking for. I’ve found it helpful to keep my eye on the drop-down box as I am typing. The more I type, the more information will appear and disappear from the suggested items.
3. After you have entered your text, assuming you didn’t find your item in the drop-down box, click Enter.

Outlook will now have populated the workspace with possible solutions as well as activated the Search tab.

For the following example, I searched for the words microsoft edge. My workspace now shows not only Microsoft Edge, but also other items with the word Microsoft as well. If I had just searched for Edge, I would have gotten other emails as well referring to my car, as I own a Ford Edge car and I have received emails from the car dealership from which I purchased my car. Later, in the Search syntax and operators section, I will give you some suggestions on how to type in your search to narrow down the results.

Figure 10.4 – Search results

You may feel that you want to narrow down the search even more, and you can do this from the ribbon. Using the tools on the ribbon, you can refine your search even further:

Figure 10.5 – Search tab

You have buttons including Subject, Has Attachments, Categorized, and more. By choosing All Outlook Items, Outlook will not only search your mail but will also include your Calendar and other objects.

Advanced Search

Using Advanced Search is an even more efficient way of using Search and you will have even more options for filtering your items. Advanced Search lets you define all your requirements in one place and then run it for the results:

1. To use Advanced Search, click on the down arrow that appears to the right of the Search box.

The following figure has Advanced Search open, so you will see the arrow pointing up. To close this view, you can click on this arrow again.

2. Once opened, you will see some predefined search fields.

Choose all the options that apply and enter the information as needed. For example, if you wanted an email with an attachment, you could click on the dropdown by Attachments and select the YES option. Using the Attachment Contains option, you can type in words that are included in the attachment.

Your available options will be different depending on the object you are in when you select Advanced Search.

Figure 10.6 – Advanced Search

3. For Advanced Search, you were probably thinking there would be more options than shown in this box. If you click on the Add more options button in the bottom-left corner of the box, you will see even more:

Figure 10.7 – Add more options

4. Once this is done, the Advanced Search Options box list will be displayed, and you can click on the box next to the item you want to specify information for.
5. Click on the empty box and that item will appear in the list. For example, if you selected the Bcc field, then the list would show that field with a box next to it to fill in an email ID that you were searching for. This opens several additional possibilities.

For more options, click on Add Form Field. This will open a window to select all the available different form fields, and even your own custom forms will appear here. As you can see, Search has endless possibilities:

Figure 10.8 – Enterprise forms search items

How specific you get to find your item is up to you. You can search as granularly as you need. Start out very broad and keep adding to it. Within seconds, you should find what you need, which will probably have you wondering whether you need all your created custom folders anymore. This will be discussed in Chapter 16, Managing Your Day System.

Settings and indexing

With all Office applications, we have default options, and these have been discussed in previous chapters of this book. There are options for Search as well:

1. Click File | Options | Search. Let’s explore a few of these settings:

Figure 10.9 – Outlook search options

2. Include results only from: If you choose the All mailboxes option, your search will take a little bit longer as it searches everything.
3. Include messages from the Deleted Items folder in each data file when searching in All Items: Check this box if you want to include the Deleted Items folder in All Items.
4. Highlight color: Yellow will be used unless you change this color.
5. Indexing Options…: Indexing will help you get faster search results. It does not just pertain to Outlook Search, but it helps with any search you do in Windows.

Indexing means going through all your files and messages and any content on your computer and cataloging this information. This process is similar to an index of a book but, instead of manually finding that index in the back of a book, you are searching for it electronically. If Outlook Search doesn’t find what you want, then indexing may not be working properly.

6. To do some troubleshooting, you can click on the Indexing Options… button:

Figure 10.10 – Indexing Options

7. Verify that Microsoft Outlook is in this list and that Indexing Complete is stated at the top of the Indexing Options dialog box.
8. Click on Microsoft Outlook and then click on Modify:

Figure 10.11 – Indexing Options, Modify

9. Verify that the Microsoft Outlook selection box is checked. If not, check the box and click OK so that indexing is performed on Outlook:

Figure 10.12 – Indexed locations

10. To troubleshoot indexing problems further, open the Options window for indexing. To do this click File | Options | Search | Indexing Options…:

Figure 10.13 – Indexing help

The bottom-left corner of this box has two links to get help from Microsoft.

11. Click on the How does indexing affect searches? link for help on understanding how indexing works, and click on Troubleshoot search and indexing for the troubleshooter to open, where there will be a tool that will repair indexing on the computer. You will need to be signed in as an administrator for this tool to work.

If you find your search results are still not complete, you should rebuild the Outlook index. You can identify the need for this by noticing that you are not seeing the expected results of your searches, or you are seeing partial or no items returned with a search. A rebuild will restart the indexing of all your data files and completely rebuild the search catalog.

Rebuilding the Outlook index

You can rebuild the index and override the original index settings:

1. To do this, click on File | Options | Search | Indexing Options | Select Outlook | Advanced | Rebuild:

Figure 10.14 – Rebuild index

A message will tell you that you are about to start rebuilding the index and some functionality will not be available to you in the Search feature until the index rebuild is complete:

Figure 10.15 – Rebuild index running

2. The Indexing Options box will now indicate that the indexing is in progress, as shown here:

Figure 10.16 – Indexing in progress

Once this is complete, you can run a search to ensure it is working correctly.

Search syntax and operators

If you had problems searching for emails over a decade ago, you need to realize that Search has become a lot more robust. Locating emails and other items has become even easier if you use the right terms. There is, however, more to Search than just typing in a word in the Search box and pressing Enter. Let’s now learn how to enter your search terms the right way.

The following table gives examples of what you can enter in the Search box without using the Advanced tools. By learning these techniques, you will speed up your search requests and fine-tune the process.

This is not a complete list. For more information on Search syntax for Outlook, refer to the Further reading section at the end of this chapter.

Table 1.1 – Outlook Search syntax

Summary

Using Search is the fastest way to search for previous emails or other items that you need to find. Everyone learns their own style of how they want to find items, and I have found this even depends on what I am looking for. You can start by scanning folders, or you can choose to sort and filter the inbox, but if you are like me, you will go to Search first. I have found it to be the fastest option that works every time.

In the next chapter, we will discuss the different ways you have for sharing Mail, Contacts, and People with others in your organization. You will learn the steps necessary to give permission to other users, and what is necessary for sharing to occur.

Questions

1. How do I permanently delete an email I no longer need?
2. What is the difference between All Mailboxes and All Outlook Items when performing a search by location?
3. How can I set the default Search location to All Mailboxes so I don’t have to change it each time?
4. Is there a limit to how many search results Outlook will provide?
5. I want to clean up some space on my computer and I noticed I have emails in my Deleted Items folder. Can I delete these emails?

Answers

1. When you delete an email from the inbox, it gets placed in the Deleted Items folder by default. This will reside in the Sent Items folder for 30 days unless it is permanently deleted. To delete permanently, select the message, and click Shift + Delete on the keyboard.
2. All Mailboxes will include a search in all your emails within your mailboxes. All Outlook Items will search your mailboxes, Calendar, and Tasks.
3. You can change this in the Options settings for Search. Click File | Options | Search. Under the Results section for Include results only from, select All mailboxes| OK.
4. Yes, the Outlook limit for search results is to display 200 items with Outlook default settings.
5. Yes, you can delete the entire contents of the Deleted Items folder at once or you can select each email and delete it individually. Emails will stay in Deleted Items for 30 days, but you can change this setting by going to File | Options for emails going forward. To delete all emails currently in the Deleted Items folder, right-click on the Deleted Items folder and select Empty Folder.

Further reading

• How to search in Outlook:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/how-to-search-in-outlook-d824d1e9-a255-4c8a-8553-276fb895a8da