One of the problems I have with Outlook is the time I spend looking for stuff. In the past, I used a
multi-level folder structure to archive the emails
that I wanted to keep, but I realized organizing
it, like in the old days, like a filing cabinet with
lots of different drawers is not how Outlook should be used. So then I started to use Search in Outlook but it didn't work the way I wanted it to. I'd get hundreds of results back, which I try to visually filter. You can imagine the frustration there. At some point, I realized
there is much more to search than just dropping a word into search box and pressing enter. You can actually find
exactly what you want, you just have to know how
to ask it the right way. (upbeat music) Microsoft updated the search functionality in 2019 for Office 365. The search is now faster and the search bar itself was moved to the very top of
Outlook to the title bar. This is now the same for the desktop app and Outlook for the web. To use search, just click
inside with your mouse or use the shortcut key
Alt + Q or Control + E. This will open a dropdown
where Outlook will make some personalized suggestions
based on your recent activity. I don't find that particularly helpful, but in case of when you repeat a search this may be useful for you. In the past, I typed my search words here and get hundreds of results back but that's like driving
your car in first gear only, it's going to take
forever to get anywhere. There are two ways you can use search. Instant search and advanced search, I'm going to show you both. Let's start with instant search. So let's see I'm looking for something with the key word XelPlus. I just type it in the
search box, press enter and get all these results. To narrow down to results,
I can go to the search tab with these buttons and drop downs I can refine my search step-by-step. With Scope here on the left, you can narrow or expand
the scope of your search. The default is current mailbox, and I'm going to show you
later how you can change your default if you need to. If you have more accounts you may want to expand your
search to all mailboxes. Another option to restrict your
search is to narrow it down to just the Current Folder. In my example here, this means
inbox, excluding Subfolders. If you select Subfolders,
you include inbox and every folder below it. All Outlook Items is as
broad as you can get. It's going to search in all
mailboxes and not just in mail but also in your calendar and contacts. Under Results, you get the option to Include Deleted Items in your search. Depending on your situation, this could really inflate your results so I don't recommend that. Instead, you can always search the deleted items folder separately. If your search doesn't return,
what you were looking for you can select Include Older Results your search may take
longer this way though. With Refine over here, you get to really narrow
down your search results. Let's say the message I'm
looking for was for me I can click on From and
type in Leila and hit enter. This way it searches for
everything with a keyboard XelPlus where Leila is the sender,
but let's not stop there. I know that the message had an attachment, so I select Has Attachments. And maybe I also know that
the word course was included in the subject line, I can click on Subject
and add that to my search. And here is the email I was looking for also, if you categorize your emails you can restrict your results to a certain category with this dropdown or with Send To, you get
to search by recipients. You can search for mail that you flagged or marked as important. These options will really help you find what you're looking for. Now, let's talk about advanced search. The second method is
to use advanced search, now this is a more efficient way and it's going to give
you even more options. Instead of sequentially
narrowing down the search like with it in instant search,
you can do it all in one go. To get it, click inside the search box and then under drop down here on the side. This will open a drop down
with predefined search fields. You can define where to search in, if what you're looking for
has an attachment or not. Basically all the search options we saw on the search tab, you can also find here and you even have more choices. For example, with Attachment Contains you can directly look for keywords that you know are in
attachment of the message. So let's say, I know that
the message I'm looking for had an attachment that
contains the word set one. I put it in quotation marks because I want an exact phrase match. We'll cover search syntax
towards the end of the video, so stay tuned for that. Now let's click on search
and I get two results. When we open the attachment, we see that it found the
phrase set one in the PDF. That's pretty cool. Also you're not limited to
the predefined search fields that we signed a dropdown. Let's close this search and
go back to advanced search. Notice the button, Add More
Options in the corner here when we click this, we get to
the advanced search options where we can enable
additional search fields. So let's say I want the
option to specifically search for recipients in BCC, check
this box and click on apply and now we have BCC available for search. So remember these additional options, whenever you can't find the fields, you need to restrict your results to. Now let's talk about options and indexing. As always with office products there are some standard
application options we should explore. Go to File, Options
and then select Search, under Results you can
define the default folder for the instant search. I usually have this on the second option. You can choose to include deleted items when you're searching in all items. Typically I don't enable that. You can also change the highlight color, that's the color used to highlight the search terms in the results. On top here we have Indexing Options, this is an important topic
when it comes to search. Indexing helps you get
faster search results and it's not just relevant
for Outlook search but any search that
you're doing in Windows. Essentially indexing is
going through your files, your messages, and any
other contents on your PC and it's cataloging the information. And often when Outlook search doesn't find what you're looking for or it just gives you incomplete results, indexing is not working properly. There is a lot more to
indexing on Windows 10 than I can cover in today's video but two important things to remember. When we click on indexing options on top, you'll get the current status make sure that indexing is complete. And number two, make sure that Outlook is included
as part of indexing. So under index these locations you should see Microsoft Outlook, if not choose modify
and click to enable it. As a last resort, if
you're still having trouble with accurate search results
or indexing, doesn't finish you may have to rebuild
the search catalog. This will restart indexing
of your data files. Finally, let's talk about search syntax. Now that we understand the
technicalities of Outlook Search let's cover some basics
about search syntax. Outlook Search uses prefixed matching. So if you type in plus in the search box it will find messages that
contain plus, plusses and plushie but not XelPlus or surplus. Also it's not case sensitive. So it will find Plus in proper case and PLUS in upper case as well. We already saw that if you want
to look for an exact phrase, like set one you need to
put it in quotation marks. If you don't, it will
return all variations. You can also use logical operators like, and, or, and not in your search but you need to use upper case letters. For example, if you search
for Leila AND Gharani it will return items containing
both Leila and Gharani but not necessarily in that order. Leila OR Gharani will find
items containing Leila, Leila's, Gharani or any other
combination of uppercase and lowercase letters. Leila NOT Gharani, will find all items with Leila that don't
include the word Gharani. You can even use comparison operators like greater than or smaller than signs. For instance, if you type in message size then put a colon and then
the greater than sign 5MB in the search box. It will return items that are
larger than five megabytes, pretty cool, right? If I use the syntax received
greater than let's put in February 6th, 2021, it will
return all emails received after February 6th, 2021. There are many more possibilities. I'm going to put a link in
the description of this video to a Microsoft Support page that's going to give you a lot more ideas. Now, I think you're going to agree that there is much more to Outlook Search than initially meets the eye. I hope these tips will be helpful for you to find what you need. As always if you liked what you saw, please give this video a thumbs up and consider subscribing if
you haven't already done so. Thank you for watching and
I'll see you in the next video. (upbeat music)
