When you're in Outlook - you can make simple searches just by typing in the search box at the top. Some examples of things to search for:
- One or more words you're searching for
- A person's name (first, last, or full name)
- An email address (of someone who you're looking for mail from, or someone you sent mail to)
- A phrase surrounded by quotes. For example searching for "New Paltz" would find emails only with those two words together since they are surrounded by quotes. Just searching for: New Paltz (without quotes) would show mail with either word.
If you are searching for something common, searching for a specific message from a person that you receive a lot of email from, or other reasons you get a lot of searches, there are other options.
To access the Advanced Search options:
- Click on the search box
- When you do so, you'll see the filters button on the right. It looks like three horizontal lines with the larger ones at the top, as indicated in the screenshot below.
Within the advanced search, you can narrow down your search using any of the options shown below:
- Search only in a specific folder
- Narrow down by sender (From) or recipient (To or CC)
- Search by subject
- Search by Date
- Include messages with attachments via the attachments box
- or the Keywords line which just looks for those words in any part of an email (subject, message body, etc.).
The searches can be combined. For example, if you were looking for an email with an attachment you sent between May & August, you would set the "Search in" section to the Sent Items folder, check the "Attachments" box and set the Date Range to May 1 2023 to August 1 2023.
These options can help find a needle in the haystack of thousands (or in some cases, hundreds of thousands) of emails that you may have.