Outlook 2003's sucky search tool

[scs0]

What were these developers smoking when they whipped up that search
tool in Outlook 2003?

Let's see. My email account spans nearly 7 years. Let's say I want to
search for something in my email. The rocket scientists at Microsoft
have made my life "easier" by providing a tool to limit the time period
over which my search will cover. Let's see, I have:

Yesterday - Handy for searching through that pile of 5 emails I
received
Today - Handy for those zero emails I've received this morning
In the last 7 days - (This one's actually handy)
Last Week
This week - (Hum... Isn't this the same as "In the last 7 days?")
Last Month
This Month


In other words, if I received an email in the past 60 days I can filter
my search down easily. If the email was received 61 days in the past I
am forced to expand my search to include the entire account which adds
another 2,375 days to my search.

What would have been so hard for a radical feature like this:
Search Start Date:
Search End Date:


What's the deal with Microsoft software and its lousy search features
anyway? Gates needs to get everyone together who's ever worked on a
search tool for Microsoft and fire them immediately. Take a look at
this quick rundown:

1) Windows Explorer: The search feature was made so user friendly it's
actually hard to use. Changing your search folder is a hassle, and the
feature to find text within files (even a freaking text file) fails so
often you have to wonder if any code is actually hooked up to the
feature.

2) Visual Studio.NET: Right-click on a header filename and tell the app
to open the document and it will usually fail.

3) The "Find" tool in many Windows apps will bounce around the screen
as you move among occurances of the text you are searching for. Highly
annoying!

4) Quick: What's the hotkey for the search tool? No one knows! Every
app has a different hotkey!


Fix it, fix it FIX IT!!!!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You might want to take a look at what's coming in Outlook 2007 -- http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_affronti/default.aspx

In the meantime, Microsoft (via Lookout and MSN Desktop Search) and Google both have free search tools that can index your Outlook data for much faster retrieval.

And Advanced Find has a "between" search operation that you can use to enter two dates, separated by And.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Brian Tillman]

What were these developers smoking when they whipped up that search
tool in Outlook 2003?

Let's see. My email account spans nearly 7 years. Let's say I want
to search for something in my email. The rocket scientists at
Microsoft have made my life "easier" by providing a tool to limit the
time period over which my search will cover. Let's see, I have:

Yesterday - Handy for searching through that pile of 5 emails I
received
Today - Handy for those zero emails I've received this morning
In the last 7 days - (This one's actually handy)
Last Week
This week - (Hum... Isn't this the same as "In the last 7 days?")
Last Month
This Month


In other words, if I received an email in the past 60 days I can
filter my search down easily. If the email was received 61 days in
the past I am forced to expand my search to include the entire
account which adds another 2,375 days to my search.

What would have been so hard for a radical feature like this:
Search Start Date:
Search End Date:

Advanced Find does that quite handily, in my opinion.

 

[Guest]

1. Right click on the folder, Advanced Find.
2. Choose the Advanced tab.
3. Field drop-down > Date/Times field > Sent (or whatever works for you here).
4. Now you can see the "Conditions" box. Selections include "On or before",
Between, etc.

 

[scs0]

Advanced Find is exactly what I described in my post and it is totally
inadequate. What Outlook 2003 needs is functionality to specify a
range of dates.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Advanced Find can handle date ranges on the Advanced tab:

1) Select the field you want to search.
2) Under Condition, choose "between."
3) Under Value, type in the start and end dates with "and" in the middile, e.g.

3/30/2006 and 4/2/2006

will find items from midnight 3/30 through midnight 4/2, in other words, those on 3/30 thorugh 4/1.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers