n today’s modern workplace, email is one of the primary channels of communication, and the majority of us use email applications like Outlook to manage our inboxes and send and receive messages. However, when the number of emails we receive increases in our inbox, it may become more difficult for us to locate specific emails when we require them. The search function in Outlook is really helpful in situations like this one.
In this piece, we will go through several different ways to search for an email in Outlook to make your experience searching for emails easier.
Using the Search Bar
The search box in Outlook is the quickest and easiest way to look for an email that you have stored in the program. It may be found in the upper-right-hand corner of the Outlook window and is often indicated by an image of a magnifying glass. The following actions need to be taken to search for an email using the search bar:
- Open Outlook.
- In the box labeled “Search,” insert a word or phrase associated with the lost email you are trying to find. Before you press Enter, it will show some quick matching results.
- To begin the search, either press Enter on your keyboard or you can also click on the magnifying glass symbol.
When you input a term or phrase, Outlook will display emails that match that keyword or phrase. You can view other results by clicking the “Next” button if the email address you’re looking for isn’t in the first set of results on your screen.
Search in Outlook Email Body – Advanced Search
You can use the advanced search option if the standard search bar does not provide you with the required results. By allowing you to choose a variety of factors, including the sender, recipient, subject, date, and even more, the advanced search option enables you to obtain results that are more specifically tailored to your needs. Follow these steps to do a more advanced search within Outlook:
- Click in the Search field.
- The Search tab opens on the ribbon automatically.
- Expand the Options group, if necessary.
- Click the Search Tools button.
- Select Advanced Find.
- The Advanced Find dialog box appears. Here, you can choose to search for keywords in the subject or body of a message, specify a sender to search for, or specify a date range to search.
- Click the More Choices or Advanced tabs in the dialog box to have more search options, such as read or unread items, items with attachments, or flagged items.
- Fill in the search criteria you know.
- Click Find Now.
Outlook Search Syntax
If you want to perform more advanced and precise searches in Outlook, you can use the Outlook search syntax. This is a set of operators, keywords, and filters that you can use to create complex search queries.
For example, you can use operators such as AND, OR, NOT, NEAR to combine multiple terms or exclude certain terms from your search. You can also use keywords such as from:, to:, subject:, cc:, bcc:, etc. to specify which field of the email you want to search in. You can also use filters such as hasattachment:, isflagged:, isread:, etc. to narrow down your search by certain attributes of the email.
Here are some examples of Outlook search syntax for different scenarios:
- To find emails from John Smith that have attachments: from:”John Smith” hasattachment:yes
- To find emails that have “report” in the subject line and were sent in January 2024: subject:report received:1/1/2024..1/31/2024
- To find emails that contain “budget” or “forecast” but not “sales” in the email body: (budget OR forecast) NOT sales
- To find emails that are marked as unread and have high importance: isread:no importance:high
Using Search Folders
The contents of your inbox can be viewed in a more organized fashion by using search folders, which are essentially digital equivalents of physical folders. You may search for emails using search folders, which saves you from manually entering the search criteria each time. Follow these steps to establish a search folder in Microsoft Outlook:
- Open Outlook.
- To create a new search folder, select the Folder tab and then click “New Search Folder.”
- Choose the kind of search folder you wish to create from the drop-down menu in the “New Search Folder” window. For instance, you can construct a search folder that shows all of the emails with a particular sender or those with a particular subject.
- Indicate the criteria that should be used for the search folder.
- To initiate the creation of the search folder, select the “OK” button.
- The search folder will now be visible in your list of folders and will present you with all the emails relevant to the search parameters you chose. You may get to the search folder whenever you like by selecting it from the folder list and clicking on it.
Additionally, you can optimize your search by customizing your Outlook search settings according to your preferences. You can access the search settings by clicking on the “File” tab in the toolbar, and then selecting “Options”. In the Options window, click “Search” in the left pane.
Search for Emails in Outlook 365
If you are using Outlook 365, which is the cloud-based version of Outlook, you may have some additional features or considerations related to searching emails. For example:
- You can use Microsoft Search to access a unified search experience across all your Microsoft 365 apps, including Outlook. You can access Microsoft Search by clicking on the search bar in the toolbar, or by pressing Ctrl+E.
- You can use natural language queries to search for emails in Outlook 365. This means you can type your search in plain English, without using any operators or keywords. For example, you can type “emails from John about the project” or “emails with attachments I received last week”.
- You can use the Search tab in the ribbon to access more search options and tools in Outlook 365. For example, you can use the Refine group to filter your results by sender, subject, date, etc. You can also use the Scope group to change the scope of your search from the current folder to all mailboxes, or to a specific folder.
Conclusion
When you have a significant number of emails in your inbox in Outlook, it might be challenging to search for a certain email among all those messages. You may make the experience of searching for emails in your inbox more manageable by using the numerous options that are covered in this article, such as the search bar, advanced search, search folders, and fast search. By making use of these capabilities, you will be able to quickly and effectively locate the email that you are looking for.
If you are still looking for the correct email address, you might try utilizing a text search engine such as Anytxt. Because you can use this tool to search for specific content within your email and other files, it is an extremely helpful resource that may help you discover what you need in a hurry.
You can simplify the process of searching for emails and easily locate what you’re looking for by using the search options in Outlook. In addition, you can use Outlook search alternative, AnyTXT for quick file search.
