searching Contacts is totally ineffective

[DonJ-Austin]

I know that some folks shreek excessively about problems
and design issues in MS software, but I try to maintain a
balanced, open-minded perspective. I have been recently
struck by two blatant and hard to excuse failings and
seek some degree of understanding and rationale.

Env: Office 2003 over WinXP HE, both fully updated.

I tried searching, using Find, in Contacts for a phone
number, in 10-digit format - "(nnn) nnn-nnnn", without
the quotes. Got no hits, then spent 30+ minutes reading
through Contacts and found it. Yesterday, did
essentially same thing with a one-word company name,
Intel, and got similar outcomes.

This is nothing exotic, or tied into complex design trade-
offs. It is a simple string search. So:

- is there some non-obvious or secret technique I should
be using ?
- how should I find occurences or strongs other than in
the name fields - or is that an unreasonable need ?
- what explanation does MS have for this ?
- does MS feel this is an unimportant issue for a PIM ?
- what expectation should I have about accomplishing such
functions in future ?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I don't think Find searches the phone number fields. You can use Advanced
Find for that.

 

[DonJ-Austin]

-----Original Message-----
I don't think Find searches the phone number fields. You can use Advanced
Find for that.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

I'm not talking about the default search box for Contact
names; I'm talking about the Find icon that open a search
toolbar with fields for both a search argument and a
search location (folder). In other folders and object
types, this search does look into the body of the object -
but it is not at all clear how the search is
constructed, and results imply shifts in construct. I
think this is the point of issue for me.

Example: Use the find toolbar mentioned above to search
Inbox for a multiple-word string known to exist in some
message. Slect on of the results messages and use the
Edit-Find on the menu to search for the exact same
argument, and it is not found. Does one use 'all words'
and the other use 'exact phrase' as the method ? Why
would these basic search functions default to different
constructs for searches ? How could anyone keep straight
on these things without focusing more mental energy on
remembering how the tool works that on the purposeful
task at hand. I am reminded of the revelation in a
dicussion with you, Sue, from early 2001 that Outlook's
design (by *large* committee) resulted in 4 different
sets of code with different behaviors, depending on
object type and command sequence, to render a print image
before invoking the printer driver.
1: msg in preview window 2: msg open in its own window
3: msg in compose window, and 4: (I cannot remember)

So, my take away on this search question is always use
the Advanced Find if I'm looking for anything other than
a primary key value in an object. But considering this
tendency toward design inconsistency, I still will not be
confident that advanced finds will operate the same way
in all forms and objects. Why does it need to be this
way ?

Hopefully the newly acquired Lookout will stay true to
form. Any chance I can get on the beta, or alpha, list ?
You can post on the CoF Coordinators list and I can
respond with direct contact info.

Cheers. dj

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

My guess is that the Find tool is designed for handling the bulk of quick
and dirty searches that the average user is likely to perform. It does not
use exact phrase matches. Each folder's Find command searches a different
combination of fields. It also has some limitations searching the bodies of
HTML-format messages.

If you want to do precise searches, you can use Advanced Find. Since you
already are aware of LookOut, that's a good option, too.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers