Outlook Email Searching

If you are using the Search feature in Outlook to find emails in your Inbox, or any folder, and it doesn’t seem to be returning all of the emails you believe should be returned in your search results, please consider one of the following:

Including Older Results

When performing a search on your mailbox, if the email you are looking for doesn’t appear and could have been sent/recieved some time ago, then it is worth noting that you can include search results going further back in time.

1. When you have performed a search, the Ribbon at the top of Outlook will change to give you options for searching.
2. Click on Search Tools
3. Select Include Older Results

If this still doesn’t provide you with the email that you are looking for, please continue reading this article.

Rebuild Search Index

This should be the first thing you try if you are having problems with the Search feature within Outlook. To do this, please perform the following:

1. In Outlook, click on FILE > Options
2. Click on Search from the menu on the left
3. Click on Indexing Options in the top right corner
4. Click on Advanced
5. Under Troubleshooting, select Rebuild

Give this some time to rebuild the search index, and then attempt the search again.

Extend/Disable Exchange Cache Mode

If rebuilding the Search Index still didn’t produce the desired results, then it may be that Outlook has not downloaded the email that you are looking for. For performance reason, Outlook will only download a certain proportion of your emails (the most recent), and leave the rest on the server. Although you do get the option to look on the server if your search returns no results at all, if your search does return results, just not the one you’re looking for, this option isn’t immediately obvious, so you may want to consider extending the time that Outlook downloads your emails for, or completely disabling this feature and downloading all of your email to Outlook. To do this, please follow these steps:

1. In Outlook, click on FILE > Account Settings > Account Settings
2. Click on the email account that you wish to modify, and click on the Change… button at the top
3. Here you can either extend the time period that Outlook downloads emails for, by moving the slider to the right as appropriate, or you can disable the feature altogether by unchecking the box for Use Exchange Cached Mode
4. Select Next and then Done/Finish

NOTE: If you choose to disable the Exchange Cache Mode entirely by unchecking the box, this can cause performance issues for Outlook and possibly your device in general, depending on the hardware of your device. This is not recommended in the vast majority of cases, but it has been included as it is a possible resolution for some users in certain circumstances.

Once you have changed this setting, please allow some time for Outlook to download the email that it doesn’t currently have. The time this will take will depend on the amount of data that needs to be downloaded in the addition period of time that you have added to the cache.

Once fully updated, if you are still receiving the issue, please attempt to Rebuild the Search Index from the previous section, as this can help to resolve the issue after a large amount of data has been added to the Outlook Cache.