Instant Search not working and Outlook indexing never completes

[Scooter]

I attempt to search for a particular Contact entry. A message is displayed
"Instant Search encountered a problem while trying to display search results.
Modifying your query may resolve this problem." I clicked OK on the message
box and a highlighted message appeared across the top of the Contacts pane
"Search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed.
Click here for more details." When I click on the message, another info box
appears titled: "Outlook is currently indexing your items. Search results
may be incomplete because items are still being indexed" , "xxxx items
remaing in "Personal" folders" and "xxxx items remaining across all open
mailboxes". The xxxx is a number that is always different each time I look
at it (sometimes a large number, sometimes small), but never zero, and never
trending in one direction or another...almost like the indexing process is in
an unending loop that never comes to completion. When I click START, then
CONTROL PANEL, then INDEXING OPTIONS, it says Indexing is not running. I
have XP on my laptop, I'm running Outlook 2007. Help please.

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

Start with the basic troubleshooting for Instant Search:
http://www.msoutlook.info/question/47

 

[vandanag.net]

Solution ! just need to scan your pst - file for errors with scanpst.exe

First let us check if the pst-file has been marked to be indexed. To do this go to Tools-> Options-> Search Options… In the Indexing section you can select which data file to index.

If it has been marked but Outlook doesn’t display the correct results, this usually means there is some corruption going on in your pst-file.In order to fix these you should scan your pst-file for errors with scanpst.exe (you can find this in the same folder as outlook.exe or use OutlookTools[http://www.howto-outlook.com/products/outlooktools.htm] (free!) to locate it for you).


I just run the scanpst.exe file defined by outlook tool, it solves my problem truely.

NOTE : Just make sure that your indexing services are running. If not then go to Control panel --> turn on/off --> start your indexing services

 

[garrypark]

OK - I spent days trawling through Google searches trying various ways to resolve this problem.

It was so easy in the end - I just re-installed Windows Search from here:


http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktops earch/choose/windowssearch4.mspx

Hope this resolves your problems too