How to Search Emails in Outlook Online? [3 Method]

Want to search all emails in Microsoft Outlook? Then you have landed in the direct path how to search emails in the Microsoft Outlook 365 application.

Our inbox will be full as always, because in today’s world communicating through emails is very much important. In such case, we will search entire inbox to search for the particular email in Outlook.

It is difficult to maintain large number of emails in the Outlook even though if moved some items to PST, the inbox will turn full quickly. At that point, we find difficulties in handling the mails.

Here is the article to know about the search options in the Microsoft Outlook Onlie application

Basic searches in Microsoft Outlook
Filter the outcomes of your search
Search tips and tricks in Outlook
Search Email in Outlook from Mac
Search Function in Outlook from Browser
Search option in Outlook from Mobile

Table of Contents

Basic Searches in Microsoft Outlook

When we enter a word or phrase in the Search field, Outlook searches for it across email messages and a variety of attachment types. For instance, if you search for “project” in the sender name, subject, message body, or attachments, Outlook will return all messages that contain the phrase project, projects, projector, projecting, etc.
When we enter an email address, such as jessie1994@yahoo.com, Outlook retrieves and shows all emails from that address as well as emails with that address anywhere in the subject, message body, or many different types of attachments. To limit your search results to emails from an email address, type from jessie1994@yahoo.com in the search box.
When searching for an email by its subject line, it is best to focus our search on key terms. Incase we have to search for Meeting Agenda on 24/02/2023, we can search like Meeting Agenda as a only keyword.
Punctuation can be avoided in the search column. It is not mandatory to put the exact punctuations, commas which is available. Strings should be searched exactly for example need to search for 67810 instead of this if you are searching 6781 it will not give you the exact results.
Microsoft Outlook only return first 200 searches, if this results not returned your exact output, search again more for specific search.

Filter the Outcomes of Your Search

Select the search bar and type a name or related subject.
Select the mailbox to widen or elaborate your research in Microsoft Outlook application.
Subject – Shows the result only based on subject
Attachment – Shows only email with attachment.
Categorized – Only shown the result that have a specific category assigned to them.
Sent to – Search the message which is not sent to you and sent to other recipients.
Flagged – Only shows the email or message flagged by the users.
Important – Only shows the important emails or messages marked by us.
More – we can filters our searches based on our criteria such as CC.
Select Recent searches to open the searches again. Outlook saves the recent searches but not the results.
Click close search to close the search.

Search Tips and Tricks

Keywords searches are not at all case sensitive. For example SOFTWARE and software returns the same result.
When searching for the value or expression, should not keep the full stop after colon. For example to: Jenifer searching for “Jenifer” we can directly search as Jenifer alone. It will shows the desired results.
We can use suffix wild card searches rather than prefix words. For example if the word is ended with common* but if we are searching like *common the Outlook search will give the results.
Use double quote marks (” “) when searching a property if the search value includes several words. For example, subject:budget Q1 returns messages that include Q1 anywhere in the message or in any of the message characteristics, as well as budget in the subject line. Any messages with the phrase “budget Q1” anywhere in the subject line are returned by the command subject: “budget Q1”.

Search Email in Outlook from Mac

If we want to search for an email, message or file try this below method to see how to check from the Mac device.

Type the required message or file attachment in the search box of the top of the Microsoft Outlook 365 application.
After finishing our search, click the Exit Search symbol in the search box or select any folder from the navigation pane to end it.

Using Filters to Search in Outlook

We can use the search filters to ease our search by typing like folders From, To, subjects, keywords, or specific date if we remember. To use this option select Filters at the end of the search box.

Search Function in Outlook from Browser

Now, we will see how to use the Search option in Microsoft Outlook 365 from the browser.

Open Microsoft Outlook 365 from the browser such as Chrome, Internet explorer or safari.
Click inside the search bar from the home page of the screen and type a necessary keyword or name to get a output.

Once the necessary keywords typed in the search option, hit the enter key to get the desired result from the Microsoft Outlook 365 application.

Scroll through the highlighted emails and select the message as per your need.

Search Function in Outlook from Windows

We can search in the Microsoft Outlook 365 from the desktop application as well. Let’s get started.

Open the Microsoft Outlook 365 apllication from the desktop application to search the email.
In the top of the home page, we can see the search option to get the particular email.

Search option in the Outlook from desktop

Once typed in the search option, it starts showing results based on our search.

All the results were shown based on our search. So it will be better if we mention the proper keyword in search option.

Read also How to Create Inbox Rules in Outlook Online? [7 Ways]

Search Option in Outlook from Mobile

Check the below steps to check search option in Microsoft Outlook from mobile device. Since this is applicable to both iOS and Android device.

Open Microsoft Outlook in the mobile device.
In the home page, on the top we can see the search option.
Type the necessary details and get the result from the search option.

End Point

This article spoke about basic search tips and tricks for the search option in Microsoft Outlook application. I have given enough information for this topic. Even i had touched upon how to check properly by keyword as well. I trust this article will help you in searching the emails or files in Outlook.