ot? Outlook search function stopped working

Search doesn't return any results in Outlook (Office 365).
This seems to have happened since I applied recent Win 10
updates. Nothing I found searching that purports to fix this
works, but the fact that there are so many hits makes me
think I'm not the only one facing this.

Jason wrote:
Search doesn't return any results in Outlook (Office 365).
This seems to have happened since I applied recent Win 10
updates. Nothing I found searching that purports to fix this
works, but the fact that there are so many hits makes me
think I'm not the only one facing this.


Does your search look like the pictures here ?

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ch/ba-p/381195

Windows 10 has a search in File Explorer, based
on the contents of Windows.edb. That's the federated
search database for the whole machine.

Outlook may have its own private search methods. The
above article mentions a server-side capability for
search, as well as a fallback to a local search.

I don't know whether Outlook uses the federated
search, or goes to the trouble of maintaining
its own .edb.

Because I don't have Office 365/Outlook, I also
can't test for this or learn anything.

The fact you can Google the topic and find all
sorts of commercial opportunism, does not necessarily
mean there is a problem. Any time a situation is
"complicated", people will write articles as click
bate for you. The chances of me finding an "implementation
article" that describes the files Outlook uses, are slim.

If you know where Outlook keeps its profile, maybe
you can sniff around there and figure out how it works.
There might be .pst files or .ost file, but if
you spot a .edb, that could be evidence of a
local search repository. Databases only need be kept,
if it is desired for "instant" search results. Brute
force search is still a design option if they wanted
to do it that way.

Paul

In article , lid says...
I don't know whether Outlook uses the federated
search, or goes to the trouble of maintaining
its own .edb.

Outlook uses the system .edb file.
When you install it, Outlook gets added to the list
of indexed locations.

I discovered something interesting and useful.

Outlook lets you create a "search folder". It's like all the
others except that you can specify keywords of interest and
when you open it there will be a list of all the e-mails that
satisfy the search. I created such a folder and set it up to
watch for items of interest in e-mails pertaining to my work
as a library trustee. Voila! It shows everything that I was
used to seeing if I had just used the regular search.

That satisfies my needs. I still cannot figure out why the
regular search function finds nothing, but at least I can
get on with what I need to do.

I've tried the Office 365 repair function but it didn't fix
anything. Deleting all the 365 stuff and re-installing didn't
either.

In article , lid says...
I don't know whether Outlook uses the federated
search, or goes to the trouble of maintaining
its own .edb.

Outlook uses the system index. The Outlook .pst
file is among the list of what gets indexed. It is added to
the list when Outlook is installed.

All the attempts to repair search that I could hunt down fail.
But I found something interesting. Outlook lets you define
a "search folder". You specify what you're interested
in keeping track of (once), and when you open
said folder it displays what was found. I defined such a folder
to track e-mails related to my library trustee work and,
voila!, it's filled with just what I'd expect if I had
kicked off the search the usual way. So the system search
is working. Looks like Outlook is broken. I'll keep hunting.

I called haha Support and they were not very helpful. I
declined to let them log on to my system. I do not want
some anonymous MS contractor(?) rooting around in my
personal e-mail.

Jason wrote:
In article , lid says...
I don't know whether Outlook uses the federated
search, or goes to the trouble of maintaining
its own .edb.

Outlook uses the system index. The Outlook .pst
file is among the list of what gets indexed. It is added to
the list when Outlook is installed.

All the attempts to repair search that I could hunt down fail.
But I found something interesting. Outlook lets you define
a "search folder". You specify what you're interested
in keeping track of (once), and when you open
said folder it displays what was found. I defined such a folder
to track e-mails related to my library trustee work and,
voila!, it's filled with just what I'd expect if I had
kicked off the search the usual way. So the system search
is working. Looks like Outlook is broken. I'll keep hunting.

I called haha Support and they were not very helpful. I
declined to let them log on to my system. I do not want
some anonymous MS contractor(?) rooting around in my
personal e-mail.

Could you do a Sysinternals Process Monitor trace
while actuating the broken Outlook search ? Maybe you'll
see something flash by, like an attempt to open some
file which is missing or something.

It could be Outlook needs to be repaired, or some
DLL needs regsvr32 treatment. You would think though,
that if some DLL was not dynamically loading properly,
there'd be a user notification about it. Software
takes some failures more seriously than others.

Paul

In article , lid says...
You would think though,
that if some DLL was not dynamically loading properly,
there'd be a user notification about it


And there is. I found errors listed in the Application log, two occur
each time Outlook is started. It's trying to load mapi16.dll which
is nowhere to be found. There are pages about this on the MS site.
This problem has been around for a while. The Win 10 fix for it
is an update from 3 years ago that no longer seems to exist.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ffice_outlook-
mso_win10/outlook-2016-search-fails-the-protocol-handler/9b49590c-0858-
4934-b358-7af0469fe313.

The update for Win 10 listed there is 3 years old and seems no longer
to exist

I persist.

For my purposes, I've found a workaround that may be adequate.
Outlook lets you define a "search folder". It has the same
status as any other email folder except that you can specify
search terms when it's created and opening the folder shows
the same info that an immediate search would have. I have
e-mail related to my work as a trustee at the local library
and was able to define a search folder that finds everything
relevant to that.