Outlook Quick Search silliness.

[Blue House Computer Help]

Hi All,

Outlook 2007 help needed. Customer can't Quick Search email in his IMAP account. It's all there, but Quick Search always shows zero results. Archive and Personal Folders both Quick Search OK. Also, using search folders works on IMAP account.

Ran scanpst.exe against .pst files - errors found and fixed. (IMAP pst is 16GB, which is not good, but I don't know if it would cause this.) - no fix

In search options: Removed all search indexes, exited, re-added just IMAP account and rebuilt. It indexed about 15000 emails, which we watched countdown by looking at Indexing Status. But still no fix. Why?

Other suggestions? Upgrade may be an option, but I want to know if I'm just missing something too obvious to see.

 

[britechguy]

I honestly can't tell you whether a fix exists for the current setup.

I can honestly tell you that upgrading/changing the email client is long, long overdue, and particularly if they're using a Windows 10 machine. There are lots of other options, and no-cost options for home users, particularly if it's only the email client aspect of Outlook that's being used. There is also the option of trying to get them to move over to webmail, which if they've been using IMAP should pose zero problems, as all their stuff should still be resident on the server. Even Gmail's webmail allows you to add non-Gmail accounts you might have.

Another option is the better option.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Outlook 2007 is mo longer supported and an ever increasing security risk, so either upgrade to something current or change mail client. In my experience, Outlook just sucks at so many things and simply stops working in some respect when Thunderbird works like a charm. There would be a few minor adjustments to user habits to adapt but it can be mastered in all of 5 minutes. If they can't or don't want to adapt, I recommend eM Client, which comes very close to Outlook in look and feel.

Both are free for up to 2 accounts in eM Client's case and unlimited in Thunderbird's case. Thunderbird has a QuickFolder add on that filters messages based on them containing a key word(s), and it's extremely fast.

 

[Blue House Computer Help]

Very true. I use Thunderbird myself.

With him being an older guy, and a bit of a technophobe, I had thought he was really attached to his Outlook, but in the end we set him up with Thunderbird and he was fine. He was just happy to have his search function back and didn't mind adapting.

Thanks for the good advice guys.

 

[Diggs]

I had a customer recently that was using web interfaces for four different email accounts. I set them all up in Thunderbird. Customer was very happy to say the least. I also like the way Thunderbird easily transfers from machine to machine manually or using FABs.

 

[britechguy]

I had a customer recently that was using web interfaces for four different email accounts. I set them all up in Thunderbird. Customer was very happy to say the least. I also like the way Thunderbird easily transfers from machine to machine manually or using FABs.

Not that I don't like Thunderbird when it comes to email clients, because I do, but I avoid encouraging email client use as much as I can, period, in favor of webmail.

Gmail's webmail interface allows you to also access your email for other external accounts, and has for some years. I thought Yahoo did, too, but I haven't touched Yahoo webmail in years now. Many webmail providers offer the equivalent of multi-account email client service in their webmail clients.

The fewer times I have to transfer anything from machine to machine the better, and webmail eliminates that entirely in most cases. But even if I'm using an email client, if someone's been using a server-side protocol like IMAP or Exchange, and used a Sync extension for contacts and calendar, I never transfer, per se, anyway. I just set up the accounts again on the new machine, which is a 5 minute per account affair, if that, these days, and the Sync extension and away they go. Getting a fresh and tidy email store re-created from the server data is a plus, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[callthatgirl]

I'd try a new profile, they can get corrupt and start to fail. Indexing in 2007 relies on the Windows indexing too. So if the new profile fails, try the tricks of unchecking boxes in the indexing for Outlook.

I would also move out some of those 16 gigs from the IMAP to a local PST, it's about 8x the size 2007 allows.