Instant Search query commands reference

Outlook’s Search function integrates with the Windows Search Indexer of Windows. As this is an indexed search, it allows for faster search query results than with the traditional built-in Search function in Outlook.

With this integration, you also have access to a lot of special search commands and index fields to refine your search.

While many of the commands and fields can also be found and selected directly within Outlook, not all of them are exposed. Additionally, you’ll have to type these commands or field names manually when searching for Outlook content via the Windows Search box outside of Outlook.

This is a reference guide to the available search operators and search fields and how to use them.

• Dates
• Sizes
• Ranges
• Other search operators and special values
• Search field reference
  • E-mail
  • Contacts
  • Calendar
  • Tasks
  • Notes
  • Journal
  • Attachments

Dates

To find items based on their primary date field, you can use the before: and after: command. This usually corresponds with either when the message or other Outlook item was received, sent, created or modified. Behind this command follows a date statement that matches with the date format you have configured in Windows.

Aside from the date format, you can also use words to calculate a relative date on the fly or to directly specify a date or month;

• Direct searches relative from today;
  Today, tomorrow, yesterday
• Combination searches relative from today;
  Use; this, next, last, past, coming
  With; week, month, year
  For instance; thisweek, nextmonth, lastweek, pastmonth, comingyear
• Search for results on a specific day of the week;
  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
• Search for results in a specific months of the year;
  January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
  You can combine this with years as well; January2017, December2016, June2014

See the Ranges section on how to search for items within a specific date range.

Sizes

If you are looking for items with a specific size, then you can use the size: command. When using this command, you should not forget to include the unit of size such as KB or MB.

There are a couple of words that are direct references to a specific size range;

• Empty: 0KB
• Tiny: 0 – 10KB
• Small: 10 – 100KB
• Medium: 100KB – 1MB
• Large: 1 – 16MB
• Huge: 16 – 128MB
• Gigantic: >128MB

See the Ranges section on how to search between other size ranges.

Ranges

To search in a specific date range, you could use both after: and before: commands but there is a more direct way to do this as well. The same is true for any field that allows to be searched in a specific range such as the size, sent, received and modified fields. For this you can use the following special operators between the command and its values.

Other search operators and special values

Aside from operators to search through ranges, there are also some other operators and special values available which you can use in your search queries.

NOT operator

If you want to exclude certain search results, you can use the NOT operator;
NOT category:blue

OR operator

By default you will be searching with the AND operator which you do not have to specify in your search. You can use the OR operator if you want your search results to also include items for which only a single condition is met;
contents:presentation OR attachment:presentation

[ ] operator / Search for empty fields

If you want to find an item for which a certain value is not set, you can use the square bracket characters;
birthday:[]

You can combine this field with the NOT operator to find items for which any value is selected. For instance, to find all items which have a category assigned to it you can use;
NOT category:[]

Search multiple values

To search for multiple values within the same field, you can separate these values with a comma ( , ) semi-colon ( ; ) or dash ( – ) or enclose them in parenthesis characters ( );
category:blue,red
category:(blue red)

This would return only results for which both specified values are found. If only one suffices, then you’ll have to use the round brackets and the OR operator;
category:(blue OR red)

Search with spaces/Search exact string

In order to search for a string that contains spaces, you’ll have to enclose it by using double quotes;
"Microsoft Office Outlook"

Search a partial string

You can only search for a partial string if you know the beginning of that string. If you only type the end or middle part of the string, only results that begin with that part will be returned.

For instance, if you were to look for my last name “Sparnaaij”, then typing “sparn” will give the expected results. Only typing “naaij” will not return the correct results.

Using a common wildcard character such as * will not make any difference since wildcards are not supported. As special characters are ignored in general, searching for “naaij” or “*naaij” will return the same results.

If you need to search for a partial string, then you’ll have to use Advanced Find (CTRL+SHIFT+F) within Outlook, select the Advanced tab and enter the following query;

• Field: body
• Condition: contains
• Value: naaij

Of course this works the same way when using a different field to search on such as “Subject”.

Search with special characters

As the search index is based on alphabetic characters and numbers only (a-z, 0-9), special characters such as # and / at the beginning of a word will be ignored when doing a search. This means that when you are looking for a certain code such as #hto123, any result starting with hto123 will be returned.

If you want to search for a string containing special characters, then you must place the string between quotes. If you do not do this, the special character will be replaced by a space and you’d be searching for the string left from the special character and right from the special character separately;
"hto#123"

Search Field Reference

Below you’ll find all the Outlook fields that are being included in the search index. When searching just for a specific word or phrase without specifying a field, all of these fields are included. To search for something in a specific field, you can include the command corresponding to that field. Of course you can combine these with other query commands and operators and also still include words in your query without specifying a field.

E-mail

The following e-mail fields can be searched;

Contacts

The following contact fields can be searched;

Calendar

The following Calendar fields can be searched;

Tasks

The following Task fields can be searched;

Notes

The following Note fields can be searched;

Journal

The following Journal fields can be searched;

Search within attachments

The indexer also indexes any attachment that is included with any Outlook item. This allows you to search within the attachments as well without needing to open them first. There are a couple of commands and tricks to search and work with attachments as optimal as possible;

If you want to search only in items that have an attachment, but not directly want to search within the attachment, you can use;
has:attachment
hasattachment:true

If you want to search in the attachments but not in the item that has the attachment itself you can use;
attachment:(search words)

If you want to search for an attachment with a specific extension you can use ext or filext;
ext:txt
filext:txt
ext:docx
filext:pdf

Of course you can also combine this and search for specific words inside docx attachments;
attachment:(my search words) ext:docx