The Outlook Search Bar Is Changing, Bruceb News

The Outlook Search Bar Is Changing, Whether You Like It Or Not. (You Won’t Like It.)

If you use the Outlook desktop program for Windows, the search bar is going to change and move around and grow and grow and grow like a mutant chicken heart from an old horror movie. And just like the monster, you can’t stop it. (Cue spooky soundtrack music.)

Microsoft is changing the position of the search bar as part of a grand vision that expands Microsoft Search into a universal tool that encompasses web and enterprise data in addition to our own stuff, and uses AI to make our searches so smart that we get over our initial feelings of annoyance.

Not yet for me. I’m still pretty annoyed.

What is changing about the Outlook search bar?

If you’re a long-time Outlook user, then click in the screenshot above to search for a message in my mailbox. Don’t think about it, just use muscle memory, you’ve done it a million times.

Yeah, see, that’s the problem. The search box isn’t there. See it up at the top? Above the ribbon, on the title bar. That’s the new home for the search bar.

When you click on it, a box drops down with a selection of options – “suggested searches,” searches for a few people that you’ve dreamed about recently, and “Suggested Actions” in Outlook. There is also a section of “Recent Searches,” which amuses me tonight because I can’t actually click on anything listed there. Apparently, they’re only listed to inspire nostalgic memories.

Several things come to mind about that box, that very large box.

But let’s start with the Suggested Actions. In the above screenshot, my Suggested Actions are Search Tools, Address Book, and Filter Email. I don’t recall clicking on any of those things in the last decade. What are those doing there?

You might not have realized it but Outlook has had two search boxes for a while now. In addition to the familiar box to search your mail, there is a second search box labeled “Tell me what you want to do.” When you type what you’re trying to accomplish in plain English, the programs do a very smart search and lead you right to the answer. It’s a friendly and well-designed help system.

My guess is that no one used it, so it’s been combined with the other search box so that all searches are done in one place. Keep it in mind when you need help with an Outlook feature. Why, here’s an example from the new search bar.

I typed in “how do I boldface a word,” and a pane opened on the right to point me to an explanation of “Linear format equations using Unicode Math and LaTeX.”

Okay, maybe that’s not a very good example.

When will you see the new Outlook search bar?

Lord, beats the hell out of me. It began rolling out in October 2019 to people in the Office Insiders preview program. If you have a Coming Soon switch in the upper right corner, you might be able to toggle back and forth between old and new search bars, at least for a while.

The new search bar is a permanent part of the most recent Office release, but I don’t know when you’ll get that. I had reason to reinstall Office from scratch a few days ago and I got the new search bar.

Expect to see the new search bar at some point between last month and next November. Possibly earlier and definitely maybe later. Or never. Tomorrow. It’s Microsoft update roulette!

What are the advantages of the new Outlook search bar?

Consistency. The biggest reason for this change is to make the search box in desktop Outlook consistent with Outlook online (Outlook.com and Office 365 webmail), and with the other Office programs.

Faster searches. Microsoft says the search engine has been improved. I don’t have any evidence or feedback about this yet. There was room for improvement in the integration between searches of content on your computer and content stored online in Office 365 mailboxes and archives.

Better access to field searches. This is a big deal. The dropdown arrow by “Current Mailbox” on the right side of the search bar opens a window to search different fields. This kind of search was possible with the old search bar, but it was not easy to discover. You can search TO: or FROM: names, or search only for words in the subject or body of messages. There’s a particularly useful option to search only for words contained within attachments to messages, rather than in the messages themselves.

What are the problems with the new Outlook search bar?

It’s very large. The box that started dropping down from the old search bar was already so large that it covered the first few messages in the list underneath it. That’s been a problem for a while. Drives my wife crazy.

Some of you, though, have gotten used to clicking in the old search bar and then using buttons on the Search ribbon above it.

When you click in the new search bar, the box that comes down covers most of the ribbon. The buttons are still there but you can’t see them.

My guess is that Microsoft believes we don’t need the ribbon any more because everything we need is in the dropdown box. And all it takes is a tap on the Esc key to make the dropdown box disappear, so what are we whining about, anyway?

We’re whining because (1) we’re used to the ribbon and we hate change, and (2) shut up.

Extra clicks With the old familiar search bar, it takes two clicks to switch between searching Current Mailbox and Current Folder. With the new search bar, it takes five clicks. (Click on the search bar / click on the down arrow by Current Mailbox / click on the next down arrow by Current Mailbox / click on Current Folder / hit Enter to run the search and dismiss the box.)

I’m not alone in wriggling with irritation about little things like that.

Search as you type no longer works You’d see results immediately as you typed in the old search bar. The new search bar doesn’t start a search until you hit the Enter key.

It doesn’t matter because the dropdown box would cover the search results anyway because it’s a freaking big box.

Limited options to paste into search box This one is a bit weird. If you copy some text, you can’t right-click and hit Paste with the next search box. You have to use Ctrl-V to paste the text. Similarly, you can’t drag and drop text from messages into the new search box.

Inconsistency There’s some history for this one, but it’s still weird.

If you don’t want to reach for the top bar, you can get the cursor in the search bar if you use the keyboard shortcut to start a search.

Do you know what the keyboard shortcut is? Let’s build the suspense.

If you’re in Word or Excel or Chrome or every other Windows program since the beginning of time, you start a search by hitting Ctrl-F, right? F stands for Find. It’s holy writ. It’s passed down by genetic memory. It’s in cave paintings.

If you hit Ctrl-F in Outlook, it forwards a message. Seriously. I didn’t know that. It’s the weirdest thing. I kept thinking I was making a mistake.

The shortcut to start a search in Outlook is Ctrl-E, because Microsoft.

Keep an eye on the search bar so you’re not frightened when it starts moving around. We’ll get used to it. It’s just a search box. At this point, we’re used to arbitrary changes to familiar programs, right?

31 Comments

The new Search function is horrible. Prefer the old way. How do we get this changed back? Frustrating!!

+1
Since it’s not anymore a “coming soon” feature, it’s impossible to get rid of it.

Fucking hate it!

I HATE the new search tool. it NEVER finds anything in my inbox when I need to find an email fast, like the old way. PLEASE BRING IT BACK

Great solution. Now I find exactly what I wanted and it’s covered from the search box so I cannot see it!
Does anybody at MS actually use their products? Then it explains why they are so inefficient!

This new form is crazy bad. What in the world was outlook thinking.

Bad enough you moved it but 5 clicks to find something…ridiculous

What the HELL. Here is a thought…let us choose. If this is the new layout, I will cancel, and request a refund. I do not agree and I do not want it.

hate hate hate the new outlook search. Microsoft should really let you have a choice. I have always hated being forced to use something I don’t want to or being forced to have things changed when I don’t want them too. Microsoft has gotten really bad about changing things without asking their customers and if you don’t like it to bad, cause there is now way to change it back. So now I am stuck with something i literally hate, and because they are a monopoly i have no choice but to use them. Thanks Microsoft for making your product suck more and more and more. When did you stop caring about your customers, was it when you got to big for your own shoes, or when you realized that you monopolized the market and people couldn’t just switch. Either way you need to remember why you are where you are and start caring about your customer again.

Just had to say how funny I thought the article was! Well written and I agree on all points! LOL

Whos brain fart was it at Microsoft to place the Search Bar at the top of the Title Bar…?
Anyone with a brain would have asked the question, will my user base find it more functional…?
I use the Search Bar as often as I receive emails. It’s very annoying to have people @Microsoft mess with my productivity. Have any of you people at Microsoft every heard of the adage, if it ain’t broken don’t fix it…!?

How the hell is anyone meant to enjoy this product when it keeps changing every time there is a change in season…?
If Microsoft has run out of ideas, perhaps they should think about asking its user base before making changes and calling it ‘innovation’. It’s not, its regressive, unproductive, and really fuckin’ annoying….

Please place the Search Bar, back where it was most useful to everyone that pays your salaries at Microsoft, i.e., below the fuckin Title Bar…just above the emails, where it was most useful and functional.

Whatever warped rational you care to use in your rebuttal, you’ve missed the main point…..end-users experience, AND as a consequence, their productivity…which is the most important, and trumps your weak rational of ‘consistency’. Consistency for whom…Microsoft programmers?

Here’s a useful Innovation Idea for Microsoft, should you people have nothing more useful to do and run out of ideas: Why not have the Search option listed when one right-clicks a mail listed in the inbox? This search feature should appear somewhere under ‘copy’ and could default to the sender you’ve selected, which then yields all emails they have previously sent. Wouldn’t that be a time saver for your user base, how many people do you think would throw stones at Microsoft for that new feature creeping in …?

And while you’re at it….perhaps it’s time to start looking for someone else to replace you ‘head of innovation’….whoever this person is, it’s maybe time for them to join the Public Service. It’s where they belong, it’s where they can thrive and do more policy ‘innovation’ and cause maximum damage to the economy.

BTW: Have you read Donald Trump’s feedback on your the new positioning of the ‘Search Bar’ in O365, dated 7 May 2020? It seems he too hates this Microsoft brain fart! Well, guess what? I’m with him on this.

Interesting read, I wish I had seen this before i spent 2 hours trying to get the search bar back. I hate this new one, I am continually searching for emails sent and received and this is a poor alternative for this. Very bad decision

Please please put it back where it was. This is making me so slow.
Its affected my mood.

I loved your take on the new Search Bar and your informative article! Thank you for making me laugh as well as not feeling alone in disliking this atrocious new set up. =)

The new search bar is illogically situated and dysfunctional – won’t search server mail and confuses mail seraches with help searches – Please provide a legacy option

Agree with everything stated….for the “Current Folder” 5 clicks, you can get that back to 0 clicks by changing the default.

Go to “File” –> “Options” –> “Search Tab” on the right –> “Include Results from:”,…change from “Current Folder.Current Mailbox….” to “Current Folder”

I hate it as well. I like to search my contacts in the Card view but can no longer do that. And somehow the search shows that on some people I have two entries for them when in fact I don’t. What a cluster. Wish they would provide access to old way.

It works just like the search bar in MS Teams. I like it and think it’s an improvement.

Absolutely useless, I hate it. As usual, Microsoft upgrades us into a far worse platform. Can they please fire the team that came up with this nightmare. I am moving away from Microsoft, this is too much.

Microsoft PLEASE PUT THIS BACK TO THE OLD SEARCH. Agree with all comment above. It is not at all helpful.

Changing the search bar was a terrible idea. PLEASE REPLACE IT AND THEN LEAVE THINGS ALONE. I don’t understand the constant and ongoing changes with Outlook. Change for the sake of change makes no sense at all.

Location is hugely inconvenient. Why are they taking steps backward? Their staff sound ridiculous when they say the engineers think this is better. This is going to be a huge problem across the board.

Whomever came up with this idea at MS approved it is a complete idiot. When you click in the search bar above the ribbon, it opens a window that completely covers the part of the ribbon that has “to”, “from”, “subject”, etc., which are exclusively made for searches! Now the search function won’t allow me to use these filters anymore. What a joke.

FRUSTRATING. MICROSOFT – THIS IS NOT A GOOD CHANGE. I hate that I cannot find emails quickly. I am literally looking at an email I am “test searching” in my Inbox. When I use the new search bar, the results say that no match was found. What the heck.

who ever came up with this idea..stop it!! the old way was simple easy and effective….. it speaks volumes that i had to google to figure out where “find” had gone!! I have just wasted and hour… Great artificial

I don’t particularly like the search bar being moved above the ribbon, but I’ve now gotten used to that location. What I DO mind is:
1. Recent searches are no longer retained/available. Original article says there was an option present, but that it did not work. I don’t even have that option.
2. Search no longer starts as soon as I begin typing.

These two have been pointed out by others. What I’ve not seen mentioned is search tries to search the server first, as it has in the past, but now for every search, in every mailbox, in every folder, I get the message “We’re having trouble fetching results from the server…”. I must then click on the link to tell Outlook to search my computer. So searching servers is broken across the board, and there is no way to make searching the computer the default.

Once again, Microsoft completely screws up an, and I use the term VERY loosely, update.

I’m increasingly upset at the removal of search-as-you-type. I’m noticing it particularly in the Contacts folder, where it used to be possible to begin typing and stop when the right name appeared, or correct typos on the fly when it was obvious the search was off course.

I haven’t seen server errors myself in this context, but I’ve dealt with them before and you’re right, it’s frustrating.

This is very frustrating. I have to be able to search out last correspondence with clients and this just screwed it all up!! it doesn’t even search correctly. How do I turn it back to the old way.

The old search bar was user friendly & efficient!! –
the “new & improved” search bar is frustrating and is getting on my last nerve!

Your article was well written & made me smile!

has anyone figured out how to get the “classic” search feature back? This is horrible! I’ll move to thunderbird unless there is a workaround for this — it’s the worst!

I just don’t understand the thinking of some people….. was someones job replaced for such an action because the DICKHEAD who thought of this doesn’t deserve a job, anyjob…. no job is fitting for this IDIOT who not only approved this change but actually got it through the planning and approval stage.

I am old school and DICKHEAD if it aint broke —- DON’T FIX IT !