Search Contacts in Outlook 2007 NOT working suddenly...

[DualMonitors]

Gentlemen/Ladies: i've been a long time user of Microsoft Outlook (maybe over 10 years) and have long found the Notes section of the Contacts to be useful. i would put in keywords that would help me find/remember the contact by, i.e. John Smith, in the Notes section, i might write Joe Smith's brother, or Computer expert. Typically, i would simply type in Joe Smith and every contact where anywhere containing Joe Smith would show up, and of course, John Smith would show up as well since i wrote in his Notes section, Joe Smith's brother.

in the past couple of weeks, for some reason, i haven't used my search function much. but for the past 3 days, i cannot get the Search function to find anything at all in Contacts!!

this is a KEY functionality for me. i have over 1500 contacts and it is very useful for me to be able to zero in on certain people.

i've tried researching this for hours to no avail. i might have inadvertently hit a key to the left or right of the keyboard and that might have changed some important setting?

i would greatly appreciate any help. thank you so much in advance!

[DualMonitors]

More details on how it won't work with the Advanced tab either:

In Contacts "mode", you have all the contacts on the right pane. you go to

Tools at the top, the dropdown menu's 2nd option is Instant Search. the

pull out menu to the right when you hover over the Instant Search shows

multiple options where the last one is Advanced Find.

when you select Advanced Find, you get a new pop up window. in that

window, there are 3 tabs. the first tab is Contacts, the 2nd tab is More

Choices, the 3rd tab is Advanced.

the 1st tab (Contacts) does not seem to work for me at all as there is no

such option for searching the "Notes" section.

the 3rd tab, Advanced, asks you to start with defining a "Field" with a

Field dropdown menu. However, when you drop down that menu, there is NO

"notes" field. The option called "All Note Fields" has a pull out menu

that allows you to select Contact, maybe that's the right one? or,

alternatively, one other Field in the field dropdown is "Frequently Used

Fields" where you can choose either Contacts or simply Notes. both sound

correct to me. please realize that "Note" is probably incorrect but

"Notes" is probably correct since the section in Contacts at the bottom where

i put all my notes is actually called "Notes" plural. I suspect that "Note"

is that other Outlook functionality called Note for taking notes.

in any case, i've tried using that Advanced find and tried various Fields

options but they do not work.

i really really need this function badly for what i do daily and am really

stumped.

any help would be most appreciated.

thank you!

[sharonb]

I am having a very similar problem in Outlook 2003. Actually, all of our workstations are having the same problem so I am guessing it has to do with the Exchange Server, but I am not sure. Anyway, when we try to "Look For" anything in the public contacts folder, we get a return of "No items found". When we do an Advanced Find (CTRL-SHIFT-F) we can search for and find whatever it is we need to find. We search by name, not by details in the contact card so we at least have a way to get to our data, but it is still frustrating that this function suddenly isn't working! Has anyone responded to your post personally and if so, can you share your findings?

Thanks.

[pbounds]

Yep, I am running into the same issue here at a client site as well. Still 'googling up' to see if any others have found a solution. One thing of note on our environment here at the one customer site is that I just built a new Exchange 2007 cluster, and according to the blessings of MS support, most of the minor bugs I was experiencing have been eliminated. So it may be a Outlook 2K7 client bug, and it may be a EX2K7 bug. The really weird thing is that she accesses multiple accounts, her's and the President's mailbox, and the Contacts on the President's are searchable from the same Outlook client.

[mr_d]

Gentlemen/Ladies: i've been a long time user of Microsoft Outlook (maybe over 10 years) and have long found the Notes section of the Contacts to be useful. i would put in keywords that would help me find/remember the contact by, i.e. John Smith, in the Notes section, i might write Joe Smith's brother, or Computer expert. Typically, i would simply type in Joe Smith and every contact where anywhere containing Joe Smith would show up, and of course, John Smith would show up as well since i wrote in his Notes section, Joe Smith's brother.

in the past couple of weeks, for some reason, i haven't used my search function much. but for the past 3 days, i cannot get the Search function to find anything at all in Contacts!!

this is a KEY functionality for me. i have over 1500 contacts and it is very useful for me to be able to zero in on certain people.

i've tried researching this for hours to no avail. i might have inadvertently hit a key to the left or right of the keyboard and that might have changed some important setting?

i would greatly appreciate any help. thank you so much in advance!

I had a similar problem and I just fixed it, I don't know if its the same as yours...when I went to use the instant search in either contacts or past mail, my outlook froze and I had to restart it.

My problem was my .pst file was corrupted for some reason. First I located where my .pst was located by hiting file -> open --> outlook data file

once I knew the location, I applied scanpst.exe to the file. I found my scanpst.exe file in Program Files --> Microsoft Office --> Office 12

but if its not there, you can download the program, just google it

then I applied scanpst.exe to my .pst file, it said there were major errors that it had to repair, clicked repair and 15 minutes later everything worked again...

good luck, hope this helped

[dannyboy]

i had also a similar problem and my solution was to take an external search tool named Lookeen.

now i just type in the tool-bar what i want to search in my outlook and it will be found.

no matter if it is a contact or mail or attachment (..)

in my opinion the easiest solution.