When Outlook search stops working...

I had an interesting problem earlier this year. I went to do an Outlook search for emails from a company that I know I had received many emails from, and sent a number of emails to. I put a portion of the email into the 'global' search bar in my Outlook desktop app, and got... nothing. The result I got was "No results".

As I had just started my PC, I really couldn't understand what was going on. I had done the same search just a couple of weeks ago. But I shut the app down, and restarted. Ran the same search. And again, I got "No results".

I know there are results. I could see some. 

So I went looking for the problem online. I found a post from Tomlinson (2024) who had the same problem. Dighi, an expert moderator, suggested that the problem could be solved by rebuilding "the search index in Outlook by going to File > Options > Search > Indexing Options > Advanced > Rebuild".

OK. So I went to the File menu, and selected Options, scrolled down to the search area, selected Indexing Options, sent to Advanced in the pop up window, then, in the Advanced Options dialogue box, clicked on the Rebuild button. The process took a couple of hours.

However, re-indexing solved the problem, and I can now search as normal, once more. 

Crikey.

Sam

References:

Tomlinson, A. (2024, January 31). New Outlook search does not work. How do I fix this?. Microsoft Community. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/new-outlook-search-does-not-work-how-do-i-fix-this/232cffe1-ff03-4b3b-b6be-41b4fd47f2a9