Bring back Advanced Find to Outlook Search Tools
Starting with July-August updates Advanced Find option has been removed from Search Tools in Outlook 2016.

Thank you for your feedback. We have brought Advanced Find back to Outlook based on feedback from our customers.
Sincerely,
Outlook Team
152 comments
-
Anonymous commented
Easiest way to set up DASL search terms using the Query Builder. Removing Advanced Find reduces Outlook functionality for no reason. Horrible decision.
-
EWagz commented
YES! Advanced Finder is back.
I do want to thank Microsoft for bringing it back.
I still would like to take to task whoever at Microsoft made the decision to remove it in the first place. Obviously it was a programmer & not a business professional that has to actually use Outlook throughout the course of the day.
HEY MICROSOFT!
FYI, Outlook is already rigid enough so stop taking away things in it that actually work!
See my (EWagz) comment on Page 2 for more at
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_outlook-mso_win10-mso_2016/outlook-2016-advanced-find-functionality-has/1e49b3b2-0751-4362-8be0-84e3418cac56?auth=1 -
Frank commented
To All: It appears "Advance Find" is back!! I re-booted both of my systems and noticed that I can use this again. Thanks to All who added their comments!!!! Thanks to MS for restoring this great feature of Outlook!!! Hopefully we won't lose this again!!
-
Frank commented
To All: Have your Co-workers add their comments!!!
-
Frank commented
I agree with all of the comments made, Advance Find must be restored. Look at all of us spending time to add comments when we should be working!!! Please restore Advance Find!!! We need what we paid for!!!!!!
-
Rebekah Sim commented
Advanced find function in outlook has been extremely useful in searching for emails efficiently.
The current functions is not direct and insufficient options for quick filtering of the mails and ended up time consuming just to search for particular email. Advance find allows searching by key word in message body, to and from recipient search which gives a clearer and direct search function. Please restore the function for users as an option rather then removing it for good. I believe there are many users relying on this function.
Thank you -
Steve commented
Bring back the Advance Find!
-
sam commented
Let me guess - the UI Astronauts are back again after laying low for a few years.
You guys are either living in another planet or think of your customers who have a IQ of less than 30 -
Bernard commented
Never give candy, and then try to take it away. That's what you have done here. I was using Advanced Find in the morning. And it was gone in the afternoon. I spent hours researching where the heck it might have gone, looking for a "broken" registry key, or setting, or something crazy that I may have done accidentally. I even considered backing up my email and reinstalling Outlook in the hope that it would "fix" the issue. My boss would not have liked me "wasting" that time, when I have better things to be doing (ie, work). I then discover that the time I have spent doing this, was indeed wasted as I stumbled, quite by accident, on this discussion. Shame, shame, shame. Office Updates should come with a "Release Notes". I may not have liked the fact that you removed the Advanced Find, but at least I would not have wasted my time trying to FIND it (pun intended). Not happy.
-
Anonymous commented
I agree - advance find is very useful please restore it.
-
CL commented
For starters:
1) The ability to easily search multiple folders for a specific topic (possibly with multiple key words, or maybe from a certain person(s)). For example, could search Inbox and Sent for a topic in the subject to piece together the threads of a conversation that hadn't yet been filed to a new folder.
2) The search results came back in a separate window. This made it easy to work with the results (or multiple search results in multiple windows) over a period of time while continuing to work with the Inbox and other folders. Multi-tasking!!!
3) Not having to learn the syntax for complex (or even simple) queries. I'm a retired programmer, but why spend the effort learning all that when there was a perfectly functional GUI that was doing that for me.I have been using the Advanced Find feature for decades and I added it to my Quick Access Toolbar. I use it many times a day.
-
billclegg commented
I very much value the ability to search for messages from a single sender, for example, that contains "X" word. How can I do this now? (and BTW, I took the advice of another poster and "downgraded" my Outlook to a prior version, and disabled automatic updates, so that I can preserve the useful feature.)
-
Gary Wordsworth commented
- search in subject field only or also messgae body - choice!
- search emails From... and To...
- searchemails with time options (anytime, yesterday, ect.) indlucing options what happen that time (received, sent, due etc.)
- More choices: Categories. only items that are..., size (kBs) -
Chris Christian commented
We need the advanced find function back. ctrl e is too general, and it frequently misses entries. We need to be able to provide date ranges, specify whether we're looking for a sender, a recipient, a subject, or content in the body of the emails. This is MISSION CRITICAL. Please put it back, or come up with a new one, but we MUST have the advanced search function. I use mine dozens of times a day.
-
Klaus Dimmler commented
I just lost the Advanced Find! The main benefit of Advanced Find is that I can put a small window on the corner of my desktop and search for contacts, messages and other outlook elements. The search types that are left changes the outlook screen. Since I use this even while I might be writing an email, making an appoint, or the such, the changing screen is irritating. Getting this feature back is absolutely vital in my opinion. There are a number of other email clients around. Without the Advanced Find, I will be evaluating some others that are more user friendly.
-
smart sales talent commented
bring back the advanced search in Outlook. silly move to take it off
-
James Digby commented
Well, you have reduced the functionality in Outlook and removed a powerful feature, which returns precisely what the user asks for.
How do you now pull up a chronological list of emails received from a specific user? Well, I suppose the answer is "Microsoft's Best Guess".
Did it occur to you that legal liability could arise because an email is missed by one of your users, because they could not find an email through a tailored/filtered search for email correspondence?
Now, to make sure one's position is covered, we need to trawl through all the extraneous **** your your "simplified" tool provides to "improve our lives".
-
Penny L commented
And another thing: The only search you've left me with doesn't search Deleted Items folder and there appears to be no way to do this except to go to Deleted Items and search just that folder. i.e. I can't search all folders including deleted. I frequently need to do this.
-
Penny L commented
Another reason why Advanced Search is far superior: To use it I needed no previous knowledge. I now have to memorise everything on this page in order to be as effective. How can that possibly be a step forward?!
-
Penny L commented
Another thing: With this search box you have to know the "commands" to make it search the fields you want, e.g. "From", whereas this was much more obvious using Advanced Search.