The Find tool (and Advanced Find) searches across folders in a single Personal Folders file or in your Exchange Server mailbox. However, it cannot search subfolders in another user's mailbox or in a public folder. You can get searchable subfolders in a public folder by adding one of the Enterprise Search Tools, which generally rely on index server technology.
The search engine used by Outlook 2003 and older versions is slow and often finds items in an unexpected order (older items before newest items).
Outlook 2007 and 2010's Instant Search uses the Windows Desktop Search engine to provide instant searches.
Enterprise Search Tools | More Information
Tools
Available in two versions, a free personal edition and a more powerful professional version, ClearContext IMS is an add-in for Outlook that automatically prioritizes, organizes, and color-codes the e-mail in your inbox, placing the most important e-mails from the most important senders at the top of the inbox, ready to be dealt with immediately. Less important e-mails, such as newsletters and correspondence from low priority senders, are placed further down in the inbox and junk/spam e-mails are moved to the bottom. ClearContext IMS automates the e-mail filing process to help you keep your entire mailbox organized. Version 3.0 | |
Exselo Desktop is a Business Productivity Search tool that helps users with their day-to-day informational and operational needs. Exselo recognizes the challenge to effectively understand and use the vast amount of information available. Exselo Desktop is a modern tool to help you find the information you have in Outlook and your computer to get your job done. Supports Office 2010 and higher, preferably the 32-bit versions. | |
Find ANY email in your mailbox in SECONDS with FewClix, a FREE search and productivity Add-In that is integrated inside the Outlook mailbox. FewClix has a simple, user-friendly interface and helps you narrow down your search results to locate the one message that you need, with just a couple of clicks. No more wading through hundreds of vague search results or building complex search queries to find what you need. This easy-to-use, ultra-fast inbox search is yours, for FREE! | |
Lookeen Desktop Search with an optional Outlook add-in enables Windows users to quickly and easily browse all data in documents, e-mails, attachments, contacts, appointments, tasks and notes. Relevant information is at the user's fingertips within a few seconds, and search results are always up to date with real-time indexing. Advanced search queries and filter options allow users to easily narrow down a search. View & edit documents, reply to or forward emails and more from within Lookeen. Supports Outlook 2003, 2007, 2010, 2013 and Office 365, and Windows Vista, 7,8, and 10. | |
NEO FIND organizes all emails automatically in the most logical and intuitive way people think about their messages: around the correspondent involved in the email communication. Adopting Caelo's patented virtual folder structure all emails (both sent and received) are organized in a Correspondent folder. This folder can be searched or filtered to quickly zoom-in on the message needed. | |
NEO Pro is an email organizer and search engine for Outlook that indexes emails (including multiple message stores), as they are sent and received, into convenient virtual folders such as Correspondent, Date, Attachment Type and Category for instant access. NEO Pro introduces Conversation View, which allows users to expand the thread in the message list. Includes email notation so that users can add notes to individual messages for future reference. | |
OutlookAttachView scans all messages stored in Outlook and displays a list of all attached files that it finds. You can select one or more attachments and save all of them into the desired folder, as well delete unwanted attachments. You can also save the list of attachments into xml/html/text/csv file. Outlook 2003 and up; 32 and 64-bit supported. | |
SearchGT quickly shows you information on the currently selected email, including a list of other emails you have received from that person. SearchGT currently works with Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010. It's supported on Windows32- and 64-bit, but at this time works only with 32-bit Outlook. SearchGT is currently freely available to anyone who is interested in being a beta tester. | |
Indexes Outlook mail and files on your computer for fast searches. Sends back a daily search log that contains no personal information; you can opt out of detailed logging. Available in free and pro versions. | |
Add search and "information processing" to Outlook data by synchronizing it with a Zoot database, which supports quick query, quick filter, folder rules, and other functions. |
More Information
- To search for an e-mail address in Contacts in Outlook 2000
Hey Diane,
about Lookeen... They offer a Lookeen Free Edition (https://free.lookeen.com) for personal use with no index limitations and the full functionality, as long as it is stored on the main drive.
Best Regards
I suggest that anyone interested in search tools take a look at the newest version of X1 - X1 Search 8. It is very fast and has a great intuitive UI. I am not with the company - just an avid user of the great tool. I receive far too many emails to read in a day so tools like X1 are a real necessity for me.
Hi, Diane.
We are a 5 persons company, heavily relying on indexed contents search of our e-mail *.pst folders kept tidy since AD2000.
We use Outlook 2007/2010 Clients. We carry out search by the indexed Windows Search facility, composing queries and using the query results for further processing, like shifting those mails meeting query criteria into a dedicated folder.
Recently we introduced Exchange Server 2010 in order to centralize information and are shifting all our mails to the Server. Now, even in cached mode, we are unable to search our Favourite Public Folders unless we select one single folder - this defeats the purpose of search entirely.
Can you help.
We are consultants ourselves and we know that consultancy is not for free. Thank you.
Unforutnately, Public folders are treated as individual data files, with Search Folders limited to a data store. If the public folder is in public folder favorites and you are caching them locally, Instant search (using the Search all mailboxes options) should search them too. If they are cached I know that Windows 7 'Start Search" will find messages in them.