- Searching within Microsoft Outlook

Outlook's search box is a powerful tool to help you find messages, contacts tasks, and calendar entries. You can type a number of phrases in the Search box at the top of the Outlook window. In addition to searching for different words and phrases, you can use various keywords to narrow your search results.

To start your search, click the Search box at the top of the Outlook window. You will immediately see Suggested Searches. These suggestions are based on your search and message history. Any suggested search with a clock icon to the left will return all messages that contain the search string in the subject, message body, and even any Microsoft 365 attachments.

Learn more about searching within Outlook by clicking the topic buttons below. Additionally, you can view the search and filter email video and learn more at Microsoft's Outlook search support site.

Outlook Search Basics Use Outlook's Built-In Search Features Find a Message with Instant Search

Outlook Search Basics

When you type words into the Search box, Outlook scans both email messages and many types of attachments for that word or phrase. For example, if you search for "project" either with or without quotes, Outlook will return all messages with the word project, projects, projector, projecting, etc., anywhere in the sender name, subject, message body, or attachments.
When you type in an email address, for example aubie@auburn.edu, Outlook returns all email messages that contain that email address anywhere in the subject, message body, or many types of attachments, as well as messages from that email address. To limit your search results to emails from an email address, type from:aubie@auburn.edu in the search box.
When searching for an email by its subject line, the search will be more effective if you search for only a few words in the subject line. For example, to find an email with the subject Spring Planning Meeting Agenda 5/1/2025, search for Spring Planning or Meeting Agenda.
Punctuation is ignored in the search box. Entering "Spring Planning Meeting." is the same as entering "Spring Planning Meeting" without a period.
Strings of numbers less than five digits are ignored. If you want to search for 98101, entering 9810 will not return any results.
To keep Outlook running smoothly, only the first 1,000 search results are returned. If this list doesn't contain the items you're searching for, try a more specific search.
Searching for terms that contain more than one language may return inconsistent results.

Use Outlook's Built-In Search Features

Outlook provides you with a number of built-in search filters. To use the built-in filters, click in the Search box. Based on your preference, you can use Advanced Search by clicking the filter button on the right side of the search box. Alternatively, the Outlook ribbon will change to show the Search tab, and you use any of the options in the Refine group to refine your search results. You can find the search box at the top of the screen, whether you are using the Simplified Ribbon or the Classic Ribbon.

For more information on built-in search features, visit this Outlook support site.

Find a Message with Instant Search

Instant Search helps you to quickly find items in Outlook. The Instant Search pane is always available in all of your Outlook folders, such as Mail, Calendar, and Tasks. For information on finding a message, narrowing your search results, using Advanced Find, and removing the limit on the number of search results, visit this Outlook support site.