About Search

Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access allows you to search for messages, appointments, and other items in your mailbox. In addition to your Microsoft Exchange mailbox folders, you can also search your organization's public folders. Searches can be based on one or more message characteristics, including the people who sent or received a message, or specific text in the subject line or body of a message. You can choose to search just the current folder or any subfolders within the folder.

Important Outlook Web Access can’t search the body of opaque-signed or encrypted messages. Only the To, From, and Subject boxes of these messages can be searched. Clear-signed messages don’t have this restriction. Opaque-signed messages are encoded messages that can be read only by e-mail programs that support Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME), such as Outlook Web Access, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Outlook Express.

When more than one search criterion is entered, Outlook Web Access looks for items that contain all specified criteria. Therefore, if you enter the name "Sunil Koduri" in the From text box and type "status meeting" in the Look in the Subject for these word(s) text box, Outlook Web Access searches the current folder for all messages that were sent by Sunil Koduri AND contain "status meeting" in the subject line.

Note When you enter a name in the To text box, Outlook Web Access also checks the Cc line of messages for that name.

When you select the Also search message body check box, the text you're searching for can match the subject line of a message OR the body of a message.

Search your Exchange folders

To search a folder, you must open the search window from that folder, or from a parent folder of that folder. For example, clicking Search from your Inbox allows you to search Inbox and any subfolders you have created within Inbox. The search window will display the message "You are searching this folder: [name of folder]" to indicate the folders Outlook Web Access will search.

To search your Exchange folders

Select the folder or parent folder you want to search, and then click Search on the toolbar.
To search the subfolders of the current folder, select the Search Subfolders check box in the Search window.
Note This option is available only when searching your Exchange mailbox folders.
To search for text contained in the subject line of a message, in Look in the Subject for these word(s), type the text for which you want to search.
Tip You can search for a group of words in quotation marks, individual words, or both. Entering the phrase "status meeting" (with quotation marks) means both words must appear exactly as typed to meet the search criteria; whereas entering the words without quotation marks means both words must be present in an item, but don't have to appear next to each other. Separate phrases and words with a space.
To search the body of a message for the text you enter, select the Also search message body check box. Because this option causes Outlook Web Access to search every word of every message in the folder, the search process takes more time.

Note When searching for text, Outlook Web Access discards articles and other "noise words" such as "with," "the," and "between."
To search for items sent by a particular person, type the sender's name in the From box.
To search for items sent to a particular person, type the name of anyone who was on the To or Cc lines of the message in the Sent To box. Separate multiple names with a semi-colon (;), space, or comma (,).
Tip Always enclose full names in quotation marks (for example, "Sunil Koduri"). Otherwise, first and last names could be matched with other people in your organization.
Click Find Now to begin the search. You can't stop or interrupt the search until it is finished.

Tip If more than one item is returned by your search, click a column heading to sort the results by that category. To view an item, double-click it.