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Last reviewed on March 13, 2019 5 Comments

A user contacted me this week, looking for solutions to his search problems. Advanced find is crippled in newer versions of Outlook and although Instant Search can handle most searches, Advanced find can search more fields and Query Builder lets you refine your searches, but you can't save the searches or print the results.

He uses Advanced Find on his calendar and has several complaints:

1. No status bar showing the number of message found.

The status bar is missing from Advanced find, but if Instant Search can handle the search, it has the count in the status bar. If it's possible to Group a field into one group, you'll get the total count too. (If Group by creates multiple groups, you'll need to add the counts together.)

To use: right-click on the row of field names above the results and Group by. You can customize the view, however, the view isn't saved.

2. Saved searches are gone.

Office Saved searches (.oss) are long gone, removed from Outlook 2003 due to an exploit, back in 2007. If you do the same searches over and over (and nothing else!), the Instant Search MRU may meet your needs. The MRU is not long enough for most people, so it's not a good replacement for Office Saved Searches.

Possible work around for complex criteria: copy the Instant Search criteria and save it in a Note.

3. You can't print search results in Advanced find.

In you can use Instant Search you can Print a list of found items. Or you can do the two-step: Select All in the results pane, Ctrl+C to copy, then paste into Notepad or Excel to print. If you paste into Word or an open Outlook message you'll need to use Paste Special, As Text.

Tip: most (if not all) fields are supported. If you aren't sure, try it! Use the fieldname without spaces. IE, firstname:diane

Instant Search Tips

Outlook Instant Search Queries

Searching Outlook's Calendar was last modified: March 13th, 2019 by Diane Poremsky Post Views: 4

About Diane Poremsky

A Microsoft Outlook Most Valuable Professional (MVP) since 1999, Diane is the author of several books, including Outlook 2013 Absolute Beginners Book. She also created video training CDs and online training classes for Microsoft Outlook. You can find her helping people online in Outlook Forums as well as in the Microsoft Answers and TechNet forums.

Subscribe Notify of new follow-up commentsnew replies to my comments Label {} [+] Emoji Stickers Name* Email* Label {} [+] Emoji Stickers Name* Email* 5 Comments newest oldest most voted Inline FeedbacksView all comments Orval Wood November 24, 2013 6:48 am

You answered my problem. I was not using the default calendar. I have transferred all activities to the default calendar and all the Holidays are there. Thank you very much.

Orval Wood

00 Reply Orval Wood November 23, 2013 2:15 pm

Holiday button in 2010 goes through the motions of installing US Holidays but they do not install.

00 Reply Diane Poremsky Reply to Orval Wood November 23, 2013 8:03 pm

Does it tell you the holidays are installed and ask if you want to install them again? If so, say Yes. How many calendars are in your profile? The holidays are added to the default calendar. Can you find the holidays if you search? Either by category or for a holiday name, such as Valentine.

00 Reply cymon January 7, 2013 7:58 am

Diane - how can we search our coworkers shared exchange calendars? My coworker shared her Exchange calendar with me (I have publishing editor permissions on the calendar) and although I can view the calendar with full detail, her appointments don't show up in my search results. Any thoughts?

I also notice that only my PST files and my Exchange mailbox show up under the Advanced Find | Browse... button.

00 Reply Diane Poremsky Reply to cymon January 7, 2013 8:09 am

Are you caching shared folders? Account Settings > double click on Exchange account > More Settings. Either the first or second tab has a box to cache shared folders.

00 Reply

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