Windows Tip: Rebuilding the Outlook search index
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Outlook 2007 is running on our office computers and we're mostly pretty happy with the exception of yesterday when I tried searching for a contact in the Outlook Contacts list and the search kept turning up empty. The trouble was, I could find the contact by scrolling through the Contacts list, but for some reason the contact didn't show up when I tried using Outlook's Instant Search box to search for it.
What to do in a situation like this? Try rebuilding the index on your machine (it worked for me). Here's how:
1. Open Indexing Options in Control Panel
2. Click Advanced and select the Index Settings tab
3. Click the Rebuild button, read the "this may take a helluva long time" message, and click OK
Once your index is rebuilt, try your search again and it should bring up the expected results.
In case you haven't tried it yet, the Instant Search feature of Outlook 2007 (which uses Windows Desktop Search -- built into Vista and available as a download for XP) is light-years ahead of previous Outlook Find capability, both in terms of capability and speed. For instance, I just needed to look up a contract Bob Smith sent me as an attachment to an email some time ago. I couldn't recall which folder I saved his message in, so I did the following in Outlook 2007:
1. Click the All Mail Items bar in the Navigation pane (usually on the left side of Outlook) to display the All Mail Items Instant Search box at the top of the middle pane (depending on how you have your Reading pane configured).
2. Type "from:bob hasattachments:true" (without the quotes) in the Instant Search Box.
3. Outlook displays all messages from Bob that have attachments.
Pretty cool! Got any Outlook search tips you want to share with our readers? Or frustrations with Outlook search that you'd like me to try and troubleshoot? Email me and I'll cover it in a future edition of this newsletter.
ITworld.com
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