[Upbeat music]
How can you save time and effort managing your email by working with the search
features in Microsoft Outlook? Hi, I'm Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro.
I'm also a Microsoft Certified Trainer. In this training,
we'll focus on the search tools in Outlook.
A huge bonus to personal productivity is using the instant search feature to
quickly find Outlook items in all Outlook views, mail,
calendar, contacts, task and even notes. Plus,
we not only can look for a word or phrase,
but we can also narrow the criteria as to whether the message has attachments,
what the date range was, who sent the message;
other criteria such as the subject, where it's located,
and you can even go back to recent searches.
So it's a very robust search tool. Now, if you used search years ago in Outlook,
this is so much better.
Definitely make sure that this is part of your work in Outlook to save time and
be more productive. Let's try some searches.
So from my Inbox,
I'll simply come up to the search box here and this is very similar to how it
looks from other Outlook views and I want to look for every message that refers
to Dallas.
I'll simply ENTER and we can then see that our results are finding Dallas,
whether it's in the subject line or it's in the body of the message.
Let's narrow that down a little bit more. Once you start a search,
this brings up the context sensitive Search Tools Ribbon and from here then
could narrow this and say Has Attachments.
This could make it much easier then to locate a specific message.
I'll clear that. Let's try another search.
What I want to do is locate messages from a specific person and so I'll choose
from, and
I'm looking for Robin and because she has sent me messages,
it will pop up as a suggestion here and I also want to narrow this down.
Now, the results here would be very workable,
but imagine a typical Inbox that might have hundreds or thousands of messages.
Not that I'm recommending it,
but we might need to get a little bit more specific.
And so with this then let's say that I want to say Has Attachments,
but notice some of the other criteria. It could be a time frame,
for instance this month,
today, last year.
So what will be helpful for you to really narrow down the search from here?
I'll go ahead and close that search. Now what I want you to see here,
although we're focusing on our Inbox is that the search also works in other
views.
And I'm going to switch to the calendar and one quick way to get there is with a
keyboard shortcut CTRL+2.
And that will take me to my calendar and from here then once again we have our
search and this can be a great way,
especially if you're maximizing the use of your calendar to really be able to
dig in and find those. So be descriptive with those,
especially if you want to go back and track down a particular appointment or
meeting you had.
And from this I'll type in "training" and now
I can find all of those events where they included the word training and I could
even get even more specific was the subject training or if that was a particular
keyword related to an individual with that. For right now,
I'll just keep it as it is,
but now we can see then our calendar can be in a list format.
And this is something whether or not you're doing searches so that we can see
this information more clearly and I can go back and locate all of those events
that included the word training.
As you might notice here on the right hand side,
whether it's email or a calendar event,
then if you are leveraging categories,
which is another way to organize your Inbox and other views in Outlook,
then that would be another way that you would be able to search for key items
within Outlook.
I'll move back to mail or my Inbox with keyboard shortcut CTRL+1.
Now if you want to get more specific with your search that's available as well.
That is,
this might be all that you need because it's so fast and it can be very easy.
But a couple of things to look for here. First of all, we have More,
that is,
these are all the different common properties that might be available about the
message that you would like to zero in on,
so that becomes one way for you to be able to do a search.
Another thing to look at is a Recent Searches,
so this becomes another way for you to be able to go back to things that you use
frequently. Now if you find you have searches you use repeatedly,
this is a great use of the Search Folders feature which I cover in a separate
video.
Check out my Outlook Tips playlist for this and other Outlook training videos.
Another option are the Search Tools.
Here you would be able to specify locations to search.
Now the other thing to pay attention to is on the left hand side you also can
specify the scope and so with this then it could be the Current Mailbox.
You might want to search all Outlook items within this one,
search All Mailboxes,
so that's especially helpful if you're managing other people's Inboxes,
so explore that as another way to be able to either expand or get very specific
with your search.
Advanced find is another area to explore and so if you're still not be able to
get exactly what you're looking for or it's too broad of a search,
then this becomes a way for you to get very specific in terms of phrases,
who it's from, and be able to build in the criteria.
You'll probably find that everything you need is going to be in that ribbon,
but from here we could specify who it's from,
we could come into very specific things, for instance,
items that aren't read or items that have attachments,
sent just to me, different categories,
size and you could even get more advanced from here.
Here again,
a very powerful and useful feature is to be able to work with instant search in
Microsoft Outlook.
Now you've seen how to save time and effort by leveraging instant search in
Microsoft Outlook. For more tips on being productive with Microsoft Outlook,
head to TheSoftwarePro.com/Outlook.
If this training was helpful,
please like and comment on this video and subscribe to this channel.
This is Dawn Bjork, The Software Pro. Thanks for watching.