How To Fix Outlook 2007 Instant Search From Not Working

June 5, 2009

in Outlook

It’s sometimes rare to have Outlook 2007 instant search not working but it happens. When you’re in Outlook and type in a name or word to search you will get a result of:

No matches found for “your search term

To fix this problem follow these steps:

  1. In Outlook, go to Tools | Instant Search | Search Options
  2. Uncheck the box for your inbox and press OK.
  3. Re-open the Search Options window and check the box for your inbox (I do this just to reset things)
    Outlook 2007 Instant Search Not Working
  4. Go to your Control Panel and make sure you’re in Classic View
  5. Open ‘Indexing Options’
  6. Under Microsoft Office Outlook, single click on your account and Click on Advanced
  7. In the Advanced Options window click on the Rebuild button
  8. Click OK to rebuild the index.
    Outlook 2007 Instant Search Not Working
  9. Open Add or Remove Programs in Control Panel
  10. Click on Microsoft Office Professional (or whatever version your office is)
  11. Click on Change
  12. Select “Rebuild” and click on Continue
    Outlook 2007 Instant Search Not Working

The repairing of Microsoft Office will take a while so just refill that cup of coffee or take lunch. After it is finished you have to reboot the computer and Microsoft Outlook Instant Search shall be good as new!

Learn Everything About Outlook 2007

Learn Everything About Outlook 2007

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  • Kat HK
    Thanks - very helpful and me as an amateur in computer was able to handle it :-)
  • I'm glad it was easy to follow!
  • Mitch
    Thanks Network Technician. Your adv ice on how to fix Outlook 2007 instant search worked for me, after a day of being frustrated.
  • larinamontejano
    Thanks so much - this worked!
  • Ingo
    Or just use a third party tool like Lookeen!!
    Very fast, reliable and accurate and it never stops working! :)
  • NoOne
    There is no tool which is perfect and if someone says in a forum - "Very fast, reliable and accurate " .. They must have some kind of personal intrest in that.

    -- By Unknown..

    Why you and REED trying to sell Lookeen...?
  • Goole
    If you have a positive impression concerning a tool, tell me why it should be permitted to commend it. And I often rely more on user impressions and opinions than on some test-crews.
    so long...
  • Jimmy86
    Worked perfectly. Many thanks!
  • Reed
    Hi,
    thanks for this great article, i´m sure that this will help very much people!! I could not find a solution for that up to now. So thanks again.
    The only thing i´ve to note is that the Outlook search itself is still not really powerful and also not very comfortable. This is the reason why I´d always advise a search tool. This is not the best solution but what is the alternative? My search tool is Lookeen (lookeen.com) and i´m really glad with it. But it´s not your fault that Instant Search is bad :)

    greets Reed
  • The Network Technician
    So the name of that program I was talking about is Xobni. A couple of our IT folks use it and works really well. Gives you statistics and search.. the whole deal. You can download it here: http://www.xobni.com/
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