Ability to search the Address Book or Contacts by First Name, Last Name and vice versa while composing an email in Microsoft Outlook 2016.
Ability to search the Address Book or Contacts by First Name, Last Name and vice versa while composing an email in Microsoft Outlook 2016. When composing an email the auto-complete function only works on the first word entered. Some users prefer to enter the users surname for composing an email. This works if the display name is (Last Name, First Name) but breaks if the display name is (First Name Last Name). Also an option search for a contact by Name, Nickname, phone number etc. would be beneficial.

35 comments
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Jennifer Kroll commented
It has been 4 YEARS since this issue was brought up. I want to use Outlook, but HATE that I can't find someone when enter a last name in the TO field of an email. I just may go back to using the web browser for sending emails. If Google can figure it out and fix it, why can't MICROSOFT?
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Anonymous commented
Searching in Outlook 2016 is really very limited, it's frustrating. The search only takes into account the first term of certain fields. It is not global, you should be able to search for any term contained in any field like Thunderbird does for example, which is very intuitive. This concerns contact searches when you click on To in a new email. When we search with the search in the contact module it works. Except that if we select several contacts, we cannot give the order to create an email to them .... It's just incredible ...
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Anonymous commented
This has been angering me since I had to start using outlook.
Before I used Thunderbird and the search worked without problems.
Please fix this years-old user request. -
Phil commented
Why this autocomplete feature works in the web interface and not in the desktop client? Stone age is back ...
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Brett commented
The fact that I cant search a previously used email/name that I haven't specifically saved to my contacts is the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced. Gmail does this perfectly, I believe that the browser version of Outlook does this...but the Outlook application with all its useless features doesn't have this basic convenience!?
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Иван Тихонов commented
You can add a function that can help me to find a user in address field (TO) by surname.
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dnstrukov commented
I would like to search for contacts by last name in the To/Cc/Bcc field using the Auto Complete feature
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Rajeev verma commented
Ability to search contacts in Outlook Global Address Book by First Name OR Last Name while looking up a name from Global address list from outlook client. It only searches the name based on how displayname is set up for the user's mailbox/contact in Exchange. If display name starts with Lastname it won't search the name using Firstname and Vice versa. How to make this possible?
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Chin Meng Ong commented
Please learn from Gmail how their auto-complete and email search function works. Outlook is terrible and not intuitive at all.
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Steve Rude commented
Would really love to see this addressed. My boss is old school and refused to upgrade from Windows Live Mail. I finally convinced him to use Outlook and he wanted to go right back -- because of the autocomplete! Like most, he sometimes looks up by first name, sometimes by last name, and sometimes by email. I ended up adding some addresses multiple times and fake sending them emails just so I could have them in autocomplete by First Name, Last Name AND Email. Very frustrating!
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James commented
While composing, replying, or forwarding an email you can click "To:"
and open the The "Select Names: Contacts" box. I can see Name, Display Name, and email address columns. I would also like to see a Company column, and I would like the columns to be sort-able (ascending/descending). -
Joseph Antoine Rossano commented
when I search @cisco.com , is displayed everything related with .com and cisco, but never those mails that have excacly the word cisco.com
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boss460@hotmail.com commented
for the past 3 months some of my contacts only come up when i put in their first name instead of surname now. It is doing my head in! Its happening to other people as well and only in the past few months.
Not sure what you have done Microsoft but its not cool -
Anonymous commented
search of a contact, should be more general.
In the add contact, when sending a email. -
Ryan Nadel commented
I have my contacts filed as last, first but this still happens. I guess I have to go back and change ALL my contacts to make this work by last name. Uggg!
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Ed Heiger commented
Agreed, we need the ability to search by first name as well.
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Ernesto Autocompletado commented
Que sepáis que estos de Microsoft no lo incluirán en la vida. Es una pena un fallo así tan grande de usabilidad.
Espero que Google haga un Outlook con las mismas capacidades de trabajar en equipo y todas las mejoras necesarias, como ésta de Autocompletar.
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Anonymous commented
PLEASE allow autocomplete to search within any part of a string, ie: dougfisherATcompany.com. You should be able to search any part of that email or name. Doug, Fisher, Company should all start pulling up suggestions!!!!!
And please also include emails that are within contacts for the love of humanity! Even cheap cellphones from 10 years ago have been doing auto complete AND contact searches from any string searched. Is anyone's time valuable using MS Outlook? Even MS web-mail has this primitive function!
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Tobias commented
When Outlook autocomplets a Name / email on the to line the autocomplete should work for "firstname lastname" as well as "lastname firstname" or "lastname, firstname". Some companies configure the email Display Name according to different cultural aspects. Therefore the autocomplete and Search should work for any substring in the Display Name during writing
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Kim commented
allow searching on last names and search not only address book but my contacts.
Search option only works on the first name. If I don't know the first name, I can't start typing the last name and have the Outlook find the desired individual.
Allow users to type out the last name and have Outlook search the database. Also, instead of default searching global address list, it should search both global offline list AND my personal contacts.