How to perform a global search and replace

While Microsoft Outlook itself includes no search and replace functions, you can use a grouped table view to help update a group of items. This example updates Contact items to a different Company Name, but you can use this technique to update any field other than Categories: 

1. In Contacts, create a table view grouped by Company Name if you don't already have one.
2. Choose View | Expand/Collapse Groups | Collapse All.
3. Expand the group that contains the company whose name you want to change.
4. Open the first contact in the Group.
5. Change the Company Name to the new name.
6. Save the contact. It will end up in a new group.
7. Collapse the group that you expanded, containing the remaining contacts you want to change.
8. Drag the gray bar containing the original company name to the gray bar containing the new company name. If you hover briefly over the new company's group, you'll see a tip pop up, "Change Company Name to" whatever the group's name is.
9. Release the left mouse button.

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Notes

If you need more flexible search and replace, try exporting from Outlook to a comma-delimited file. Open the file in WordPad, and perform the search and replace there. Then re-import it into Outlook.

If you use this method to try to change the Category field, the new value is added to the categories for the items. It does not replace the category. Instead of using the grouped technique, try selecting the items you want to change, then right-clicking them and choosing Categories. Also, my book, Teach Yourself Microsoft Outlook 2000 Programming in 24 Hours, includes source code for an Outlook VBA macro to replace categories, rather than add to them.

In Outlook 2003, with a view grouped on the Subject property, dragging and dropping does not change the subject. This feature worked with the Subject property in earlier versions.

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