Hey Guys,

I am having some issues with Outlook 2016 and looked everywhere for answers, thought perhaps someone here might have another idea.

The problem is my Search in Outlook 2016 doesn't work a lot of the time. I have several archive folders, but the issues are with my main inbox/sent folders. I often search emails for PO#'s at work and it only returns some of the results, or none at all. Sometimes it works perfectly and I get what I need, but about 10-15% of the time it is missing results.

The Index has always shown complete, but here are the things I have done so far.

- I did a scan PST/OST on all my data files. It found errors and repaired them.
- I have rebuilt my index twice. I am doing it through Outlook, let me know if there is a better way to do it.
- Obviously the computer has been restarted dozens of times.

The issues started recently after archiving a lot of emails. I believe it was also on an update day for Windows, not sure if any of these things are related to my issue but thought I would mention.

Thank you for your help!!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: hunter62,

Wish I had a solution but myself along with our other 27 employees using it are having the same issue with the search.

Group contacts list are vital to us and the search function not working in that area reliably sucks.

Not sure if related, but on our hosted Office365 version, it seems that local Outlook only stores about a year's worth of email.
Have to force it to look deeper & Outlook performance seems degraded slightly.

Maybe its just a Memphis problem Dusty

Was your problem more recent? Within the last couple of week or two? I was wondering if it might have been a recent Microsoft update.

Thanks P250UA5:

My archived folders are actually doing well, it is more recent emails in my Inbox or Sent. For instance it wont pull up this one email I sent last week no matter what I type. Persons email, the subject, content, etc.

How is your email setup? O365, Exchange on premise or POP/IMAP.
If you have a PST then it is IMAP or POP.
How big is the PST?

Same question as smschulz. What is your Outlook actually connected too?

I have had to rebuild the indexing for each database on our Exchange server. Exchange Admin center will tell you the index state. Had to run powershell commands to rebuild.

It is setup as an IMAP (OST) but my archives are PST files and saved on my local computer. We use Rackspace as our email client, and I just run that through my Outlook. Rackspace is terribly for searching to begin with, so it never really finds what I need.

As far as PST files, my main OST is currently around 8GB, I try and keep all my data files less than 10GB although some of my archives are closer to 15GB. As far as I can see, I dont have any issues with my archives, just the more recent emails.

The only thing I had not tried was deleting my OST data file and letting the entire thing download from the server again. I am worried this might cause more issues since I bet it would only download headers, not entire email content.

This just started happening to me and my staff and we are on win 7pro 64 bit, with outlook 2010, and a few folks on 2016 as well

June 2017 security updates have a known issue with search. I haven't seen if an fix has been released.

https://support.office.com/en-...en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Edit to add...Looks like there's a fix.

Man oh man I miss Xobni. Best search tool ever, Yahoo bought them and then killed the product, with no replacement.

Inexplicable.

Do you have web (OWA) access to that mailbox? If the problem is with more recent mail that is on the server I would see how searching responds via a browser. That way you may be able to tell if the problem is local or server related. Do you or someone else have access to another mailbox on the same server? Could be another way to test.

Wasted a whole day trying to resolve Search function that wouldn't search. Glad it isn't just me.

Nothing like having your confuser decided it won't work today even though you did nothing between yesterday and today. Argh!

quote:

Originally posted by DBabsJr:
June 2017 security updates have a known issue with search. I haven't seen if an fix has been released.

https://support.office.com/en-...en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US

Edit to add...Looks like there's a fix.

I also have been suffering the same issue. Tx for the win update recommendation, surprisingly enough that did resolve it.

Thank you guys for the replies and links! I had updated all the important updates, but for some reason this update was under optional. I updated the rest of the optional, which included the quality roll up. This fixed the problem, and all is well.

If anyone is curious, it was the update KB4022168 that fixed the problem. It was released on Tuesday.

Thanks again for your help!