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.

Training: Search in Outlook to find and filter email messages in your inbox. Watch this video to learn how.

Learn how to use Instant Search to find emails, contacts or events in Outlook Mail. See the options in the Search tab and the Search box for different criteria and filters.

How to troubleshoot Outlook when search isn’t working (returning no results, incomplete results, can’t find older emails, and more).

Need to find an important message in your crowded Inbox or folder? 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.

In Outlook.com, you can use the search bar at the top of the page to search for email messages, contacts, or files. In the Search box in Mail, type what you want to search for (a contact, subject, part of a message, or name of a file) and press Enter.

Create Search Folders that enable you to find email messages and other items matching specified criteria across multiple folders.

You can search your email for a single word or phrase, but Outlook also includes a number of built-in searches. To find a message based on one of these built-in searches select the Filter Email button on the Ribbon.

Use the Search Mail and People box in Outlook on the web to find messages or contacts.

You can rebuild the search catalog, which restarts the indexing of your data files. The search catalog is a file where all of your Outlook and Microsoft Windows items (data files) are indexed.