I'm in a situation where Outlook's unintuitive search function makes it impossible to do my work. I hope someone can explain how to force it into doing what I need and expected.

Here's the situation in simple terms: I have a folder which I'll call XXX, which has several folders XXXYYY, XXXZZZ, etc. I search XXX for messages containing a certain word, and I get several results.

Based on intuition plus past experience, I expect that all of these entries are in XXX or one of its subfolders, and that for the ones that are not in XXX itself, the name of the containing subfolder will be in the description of folder contents. But I see some messages that I know are in subfolders but do not show the subfolder name, and one message that is in a completely different folder (in fact, in Drafts).



I click the dropdown button next to the search field to see what Outlook is searching. It says it's searching the current folder only.

In this situation, search is unusable -- it isn't telling me anything that I need to know. When I select "Current folder," it should search the current folder. When I select "Subfolders," it should search the current folder and subfolders. In neither case should it search unrelated folders. When I search "Subfolders," it should identify the subfolders that the messages are in.

If you've selected a folder in the folder list, choosing the "Subfolders" option in Search should find messages in all of the subfolders within the selected folder.


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