Instant search not available in Outlook 2007

[Guest]

Someone I'm helping has Outlook 2007 under Windows XP.

He is unable to search e-mail folders for "sent by" or "keywords" or other
filters.

What I mean is that if he selects "All Mail Items" and moves the mouse to
the search tool (the top of the screen with the magnifying glass icon) and
then clicks on the 2 drop down arrows (with the hover text "Expand the Query
Builder", all those query boxes are grayed out.

Can anyone tell how he would enable them so that he can do fast searches of
his mails in Outlook?

Is this something to do with the indexing service on his PC? If so, how does
he find out if it's installed and indexing properly. Is indexing a standard
component on Windows XP or is it an additional download?

Thanks

Peter

 

[neo]

Windows Search 4.0 needs to be installed.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/default.mspx

If it is installed, it will be listed in Add/Remove programs. Another way
to tell if it is installed is that there will be a new icon in the control
panel named Indexing Options.

 

[Guest]

Many thanks for this. Appreciate it.

Presumably, he can set up indexing options to index all his networked
documents can he?

I imagine this is done via the Control Panel?

I'll install it on an XP machine here in the office and will check out how
to set up the appropriate indexing options so that it indexes both the "My
Documents" folder as well as Network folders also.

Sincerely

Peter

 

[neo]

If memory serves me right, it doesn't setup by default to index network
drives.

Yes, many options to add/remove/modify and rebuild the index if one thinks
it is acting goofy.

 

[bernie2409]

Hello!

It so happend that I as well had some issues with the Outlook 'instant'
search. First it refused to perform a search, so I followed neo's reply and
installed the Windows Search. And for some time that really worked. But at
some point it stopped indexing new incoming mails... However, I did some
further research, which unfortunately could really solve my problems. So I
searched for alternatives and I quickly was suggested some interesting search
plugins for Outlook, all promising to perform a better and faster a search.
Out of all I found Lookeen a very good solution for my needs, and giving for
once instant search results...
If you might be interested more information here www.lookeen.net

Regards
Bernie

 

[clueso]

as bernie I also can recommend the searchtool Lookeen for that issue. Lookeen
will find every content in outlook and it's also able to search within
attachments.

check this link: http://www.lookeen.net