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How to Search an Email in Outlook – Learn to Perform Advanced Search

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Published By Mohit Jha
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Published On April 21st, 2025
No matter if you are a busy professional or just a casual Outlook user, you must have faced a situation when you needed one specific email, but were unable to find it due to the massive mailbox size. Fortunately, Microsoft Outlook is equipped with advanced search features that can help you search for an email in Outlook easily. Hence, in this article, I am going to troubleshoot those Outlook users who are dealing with 1000s of email communications daily, but are unable to find one specific email on time. Additionally, I will also help you export old and unnecessary emails to your device to make email searching effective.

Outlook is primarily used as an email client, and it is one of the most popular email clients in today’s world. However, it is a personal information management software developed by Microsoft. It provides a user-friendly interface, features, and customizations. 

Apart from just email management, it also offers calendar scheduling, contact organization, Task and to-do list tracking, Note taking, etc. With all these features and services, users’ mailboxes often grow rapidly, and managing those tons of emails becomes a cumbersome task. Especially when you need to find one specific email on time. We have seen several queries regarding this, let’s go through a user query to understand it in real-time.

User Query:

I have to deal with thousands of emails daily and my mailbox contains something about 1 million emails how do I filter out important emails and specific emails? Is there any method for efficient search?

— Valeria

What is the Search Feature In Outlook?

The search feature helps users to find a specific mail from the sender or receiver, by date, and by word. Using this feature in Outlook You can filter out the important emails, and files. It also helps to find attachments.

Why and How to Use the Search Feature in Microsoft Outlook?

Outlook’s search feature allows you to:

  • Find specific emails by keywords, sender, subject, or date.
  • Retrieve lost or archived conversations.
  • Save time and improve productivity.
  • Apply filters to narrow down results.

Whether you’re trying to track down a crucial client email or dig up old attachments, the search function is a must-use feature.

Steps to Search an Email in Outlook Without Filters

  • Step 1. Go to Outlook and find the search bar in the top section.
  • Step 2. Enter words or the subject of the email. 
  • Step 3. Check the search result where you can find the email.

Let’s talk about the search filters available to understand how to search for an email efficiently.

Search Filters Available in Outlook

  • Search in – This search filter helps to filter emails from folders like All folders, inbox, sent, draft, archive, deleted email, junk email, and conversation history.
  • From – This filter helps to search emails by sender name and email address.
  • To – This filter helps to search emails by receiver name and email address.
  • Cc – This filter helps search emails by Cc names and email addresses.
  • Subject – This filter helps you to search emails by subject title
  • Keyword – This filter helps to find emails by words in the email body
  • Date Range – This filter helps to filter emails of a particular date or Date range
  • Read status –  This filter helps to filter emails based on read status, read or not.
  • Attachments – This filter helps to find emails with attachments.

How to Search an Email in Outlook – Efficient Methods

There are different methods for different searches. You can search for a contact, an email, or a favorite contact.

Search Using Search Filters

Using filters is the best way to search emails. Here are the steps through which you can also search emails using filters.

  • Step 1. Click on the search bar, and in the search bar, click on the filter button.
  • Step 2. Select a search filter or folder in which you want to search.
  • Step 3. Check attachments if you’re going to get emails with attachments.
  • Step 4. Click on Search.

Woohoo! you have successfully learned how to search for an email in Outlook. if you don’t know how to recover deleted Outlook emails you can learn by clicking on the link. 

Search Emails By Using Advanced Query Search (AQS)

Advanced Query Search (AQS) can enhance your email search results. Many professionals are using advanced query searches to get accurate and refined results.

Step 1. Go to the search box and type the AQS keywords for your search.

Step 2. Click on search.

AQS KEYWORDS

Keyword Definition AQS Keyword Example
From Searches in the From field From:Example@domain.com
To  Search for To field To:Example1@domain.com
Cc  Search for the Cc field Cc:Example2@domain.com
Bcc Searches in BCC filed Bcc:Example3@domain.com
Body  Searches for word in Body Or content  Body:keyword
Participants Searches in To, From, Cc, and Bcc fields Participants:Example@domain.com
Subject Searches for subject field Subject: Title
Sent Searches for the sent email for a particular date you can select a date range by applying (..) after the starting date.

Note: date format should be in MM/DD/YYYY

 Sent:05/10/2024

Or

Sent:05/10/2024..05/14/2024
Received Searches are the same as the sent, but in the inbox field for a particular date or range Received:05/10/2024

Received:05/10/2024..05/15/2024
Category Searches for the category filed Categories: Receipts


Woohoo! You have successfully learned how to search for an email in Outlook efficiently.

User Query-Related Problem in Searches While Mailbox is Full

How can I search efficiently if my mailbox is full and showing unnecessary files? Is there any way to tackle this situation?

—Jimmy Thomson

Sure! We understand the limited capacity of the mailbox, and due to the large number of emails, one can face the situation of problems in searching. Maybe you have many emails for the same keyword, and the same sender on the same date. However, some emails can be important and some are unnecessary. So – How to fix this??

Enhance Email Search Capabilities for Quick Email Search in Outlook

To enhance mailbox search performance in Outlook, you can clean up the unnecessary emails and free up the mailbox storage. In this situation, I suggest you export your Office 365 mailbox data locally or old emails to your local device which can help to empty mailbox storage and make searches easier for new emails.

Many professionals recommend Office 365 Export Software, this software helps you to export your mailbox data to your local device easily. This automated software lets you store Outlook data in PST directly.

Check out the software working steps below:

  • Step 1. Download and Launch the Software on PC.
  • Step 2. Choose Microsoft 365 as the source and Outlook as the destination.
  • Step 3. Enable the required mailbox categories and apply a date filter.
  • Step 4. Log in with admin credentials and validate required permissions.
  • Step 5. Select user accounts, and click on Start Export.
Related article: Learn How to Recall an Email in Outlook Efficiently

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have mentioned all the necessary steps that are required to solve the user query regarding how to search an email in Outlook efficiently. However, we have discussed different step-wise methods required to solve this problem. Additionally, we have mentioned a time-saving software through which users can solve queries regarding problems in searching

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