Outlook 2010 Tutorial: Guide To Instant Search

Searching items from IMAP account folders and old archives is a hectic job. Unlike it’s antecedents, Outlook 2010 presents a simple way to search desired items; emails, files, calendar events, tasks, etc immediately. Once all your Outlook folders are indexed, you can search out any item from specific folders and archives.

The simple Instant Search feature lets you manipulate search results with single click and without catching-up into complex procedure to search items. In this post we will bring different search options in limelight and explore primary search tools provided within.

Launch Outlook 2010 and from the left sidebar select the desired folder in which you want to search for an item.

Now enter the search keyword to start searching, you will see all the search results which includes specified search keywords. From the right sidebar you can see items, calendar, mails which contain search keywords.

You will also see a new tab on the ribbon by the name of Search under Search Tools. It provide various options to filter-down the search results.

If you want to search attachments in specified folder, click Has Attachment button. It will show all items which contain attachments.

In Search pane you can also change the keyword with hasattachment, just enter the file extension and it will show all attachments which that extension. It will also show the emails and items which contain extension name.

From Refine group you can also choose any other option for more refined search. On clicking Flagged in Refine group, it would show all items and emails which have been recently flagged. You can also click Important present beneath Flagged button, from This Week button specify the timeline in which you want to show search results.

If you want to search mails from specified person, click From at the left end of the Refine group and in search pane just enter the name of the recipient, it will show all the mail(s) from specified person.

From Refine group, you can also search your items by subject, just click Subject and enter the keyword. On clicking Unread it will show all the emails which haven’t been read yet. Now click More to untap another function of searching. Select suitable form options from the list and you will see respective forms just beneath the main search pane.

Enter the search keyword and fill in the form to make the search result more refined.

From Options group, click Recent Searches to view all the previous search keywords.

From Search Tools you can configure different types of options, such as, Indexing Status, Locations to Search (POP, and all IMAP account folders), Advanced Find, and Search Options.

Now click Advanced Find, here you can play around with a lot of search options. You can navigate through tabs and enter desired criteria into the fields, if you want to search items by adding queries then enable Query Builder in this dialog.