Outlook email search tips:

  1. Start by opening Outlook and navigating to the “My Documents” folder. This is where you keep all your personal emails and other important files.
  2. In the “My Documents” folder, open the “Outlook” folder and then the “Email” folder. This will give you a better view of all your email messages and folders.
  3. To search for an email, start by typing its name into the address bar of Outlook and pressing enter. Then, use the search bar to find specific terms in your email message that you want to find. For example, if you want to find all emails from John Doe, type john Doe into the address bar and press enter. You can also use wildcards () to include any emails in your search, so for example, if you want to find all emails from John Doe/, you would type john Doe* into the address bar and press enter.
  4. If you don’t see an email that you’re looking for in either of your folders or in your messages history, it may be because it was deleted or moved out of its original location on your computer or because it was sent through a spam filter (it may not have been counted as an email). In that case, please contact Microsoft support so they can help you look for it again!

Are Your Emails Indexed?

To get the best email search results, make sure Outlook has indexed everything. ..

Indexing is the process of organizing and categorizing data. Outlook indexing creates a database that is easier for programs to search through. ..

If the number of items to be indexed is anything but zero, give it a few minutes and it will ensure that the search is as complete as possible.

Indexing can slow down Outlook and your computer if it’s turned on. If you find that it’s slowing down your computer, you can turn off indexing to get better performance.

Permanently Add Search Tab

Wouldn’t it be great if we could easily get into the search tab without having to click in the search bar every time? Let’s make that happen.

Click on the “Privacy” tab. Click on the “Cookies” button. Under the “Cookies” heading, click on the “Accept Cookies” button.

In the Customize Ribbon window, click on the ribbon tab.

In the Tool Tabs pane, click on the dropdown menu under Commands and select New Tab. In the New Tab pane, type a name for your new tab and then click on the OK button. Your new tab will appear in the Customize Ribbon pane. ..

You can add search tools to your browser by clicking on the Add» button.

The search tools will appear in the Main Tabs area of the ribbon. Use the up and down arrows beside this area to determine where it will appear in the ribbon, or leave it where it is. Then click OK to commit the change.

The Search Tools tab is now easily accessible. ..

We can also set the limit on the number of results to return. On the right side, we’ll see that we can set the limit to 10 or 100.

If you have both your work and personal email accounts in Outlook, then you should choose the “All Mailboxes” scope.

If you want to search for a specific email in a mailbox, choose the “Current Mailbox” scope and select the mailbox you want to search in.

This scope will limit the search to the folders that are currently selected in the left pane of Outlook.

This limits the scope to the folders under the selected folder in the left pane.

If you want to search for specific items in your Outlook data, you’ll need to use one of the other scopes. The most open scope will apply the search to all emails, contacts, calendar items, and tasks. Because of the large amount of data, searches on this scope can be slow and yield unnecessary results. Use this scope sparingly. ..

Search Operators In Outlook

Search results can be made more specific by using search operators. For example, you could use the word “and” to combine two search terms to get a more specific result.

“To find a specific phrase, put double quote marks around the search phrase.”

For example, the item “To find items that must have two or more words in it, but not necessarily right next to each other or in the order written, use the AND operator.” would mean that you would need to find items that have two or more words in it, but not necessarily in the order written.

Work and weekend are two different things. Work is a day job that you do every day, while weekend is the time you have off.

NOT (keyword)

Saturday was not great.

Looking for something that could have one word or another? Try the OR operator.

Giraffe is a product.

You can use the operators in any order to create as many search terms as you want. For example, you could type “TPS report” and then “weekend” or “giraffe” and then “not great.” ..

Search Outlook By Keyword

If you want to search for a specific email from a certain date, you can use the Date field. Just type in the date and hit enter. Outlook will show you all of the emails from that day. ..

Instant Search: -Search for a specific term or phrase -Search by text, images, or videos

The search term “climate change” appears to be the most popular term searched on Google.

Search Outlook By Sender

  1. In Outlook, click the “File” tab and select “New” from the drop-down menu.
  2. In the “New Email Message” window, enter the sender’s email address in the “To:” field and click “Create.”
  3. The email message will now be displayed in your inbox with a red flag next to it indicating that it has been searched. ..

Click on the From button to search for a specific phrase.

That will enter the sender’s name from: “Sender Name”

“We can also just type the whole term directly into the Instant Search.” ..

Search Outlook By Subject

To search Outlook email by subject, type " outlook " in the address bar and press enter.

On the Subject page, under “Search Results,” click on the “All” link. On the All page, under “Subjects,” click on the “Browse” link. Under “Browse,” select the “News” tab. Under “News,” select the “Politics” tab. Under “Politics,” select the “2016 U.S. Presidential Election” link. The search results for ‘2016 U.S Presidential Election’ show that there were a number of articles about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during this time period. ..

This puts “keywords” in the Instant Search field. ..

Subject: How to write a great headline How to write a great headline

Search Outlook By Date

Open Outlook and type " outlook - search by date " into the address bar.

In the Search tab, click on This Week. It will show the options; Today, Yesterday, This Week, Last Week, This Month, Last Month, This Year, Last Year.

The Instant Search field allows you to search for items received in the past, present, or future. By hitting the Enter key, you can search for any item that has been received in the past, present, or future.

Outlook can use the received: operator with calendar dates (

received:dd/mm/yyyy
) or day names (
received:tuesday
). When a day name is used, Outlook will search only on the most recent of that day. So just this past Tuesday, not all the Tuesdays ever. ..

Search Outlook For Items With Attachments

Open Outlook and click on the three lines in the top left corner of the screen. On the left side, you will see a list of tools. The first is a search bar. Type " outlook email by attachments" into the search bar and hit enter. Outlook will search through all of your email for attachments that match this phrase. If it finds any, it will show you a list of them, along with their contents.

If you have any attachments to your email, you can view and download them by clicking on the Attachments link under the Search tab. ..

That will enter “Yes” in the Instant Search field. This should be combined with another type of search to narrow the field. Tap Enter to search.

We could also type

hasattachments:no
to exclude results that have attachments from the results.

Search Outlook By Category

The Category tool is under-utilized because it doesn’t allow you to organize emails in a way that is helpful for your work.

We can search by category using the Categorized button under the search tab.

It will enter the “Color Category” in the Instant Search field. Press Enter to search. ..

This can also be typed in manually. Just change the color to suit the category. For example, to search the red category, we’d type

category:=”Red Category”
. For blue, we’d type
category:=”Blue Category”
and so on.

Search Outlook Email By Recipient

To search for emails based on who they were sent to, you can use the “to” field in your email’s header. ..

When you click on the Sent To button, you will see four options: Sent To: Me, CC: Me, Not Sent Directly to Me, and Sent to Another Recipient. ..

It will search for the phrase “guymcd@gmail.com” in the search text.

If we choose Sent to Another Recipient, we’ll need to add a recipient name in the search bar. It will look like

to:”Recipient Name”
.

To find out who received a campaign email, enter the email address in the search bar and hit Enter. ..

Search By Read Or Not Read

If you want to search your Outlook email for messages that have not been read, you can do so by clicking on the “Unread” tab in the message header. ..

Clicking on the Unread button in the Search tab will show you all of your emails that haven’t been read yet. ..

It search bar enters “isread:no.” Press Enter to search.

To find email that has been read, change it to

isread:yes
and press Enter to search. ..

Search By Flagged

Email flags can help you stay aware of important emails and keep track of what’s going on. By using flags, you can easily see which emails are important and which need your attention. This will help you stay organized and on top of things.

To find emails that are flagged, click on the Flagged button in the Search tab.

It will search with followupflag:followup flag. Other options are followupflag:unflagged and followupflag:completed. Tap Enter to search.

Search By Importance

In Outlook, you can see only important emails. This means that you can easily find the emails that are important to you and those that need your attention.

When you click on the “Important” button in the Search tab, any items that are marked as important will be returned. ..

The importance of the search query is high. We can change high to be low or normal as well. Click on the magnifying glass or hit Enter to search.

Combining Search Options

The search bar can be used to combine different search options, such as importance and flagged items. For example, if we’re looking for items that are important and flagged, we can enter the importance:high followupflag:followup flag in the search bar.

This could either be typed in or just click on the button and then the Flagged button.

More Search Options

We’ve found 20 more ways to search for information.

The search bar can be customized to support a variety of search types by adding a drop-down menu under the heading “Search Types.” This will allow you to select the type of search you want to conduct.

Advanced Search Options

We have a variety of search options that we’re not mentioning here. It’s good to know there are more options out there.

Type in “abortion” and click on the magnifying glass icon. You will see a list of results. Select the first result, which is an article about abortion laws in the United States. Read the article to learn more about abortion laws in the United States. ..

The Advanced Find window will open if you right-click on the desktop and select “Open in new window.”

There are so many things to search on in Outlook, it’s overwhelming. We can search based on any field of any Outlook item. There are a few hundred different things we can search on.

Outlook has a lot of search capabilities that most people never use. This can be a great starting point for learning more about what else Outlook can do for you.

You can create your own Outlook shortcuts for email tasks. Set up Outlook rules to organize email into folders. Or even schedule an email to be sent at a specific time! Having Outlook just read emails is a bit like using a Ferrari to get groceries.