Default to Partial Word Search
Users should be able to search partial words in Outlook quickly without having to type extra characters to do so. In previous versions of Outlook a user could click one of the Refine options - "From", "Subject", et al - and the search operator would appear in the search box with parentheses inside which the user could type a partial search term and receive results for anything including that partial term. In 365 however, when a user clicks a Refine option, the search operator appears with quotes instead of parentheses. This causes partial search terms to return incomplete results or, more commonly, no results at all. This forces the user to press more keys (either manually typing out the full operator plus a colon or clicking the Refine option then deleting the quotes and replacing them with parentheses) in order to search a partial term which completely defeats the purpose of having the quick Refine options. Either the Refine buttons should default to partial word searches or users should be able to customize the behavior of those buttons.
Jeff
shared this idea
7 comments
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Carol D. Rice
commented
I agree with comment about partial name search. I also miss a couple other former featuresi i.e. the date option (this month, last month etc.), the from field, the to field, subject and body. I found the search ribbon much more robust than the current version
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Menno Hagens
commented
It is UTTERLY absurd that Outlook quick search now uses "" instead of () like it always did! This results in ZERO results when partially searching things like sender names. What bloody use is "" to anyone? Does the Outlook team itself type full sender and receiver names every single time they want to find all e-mails from that person?!
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[Deleted User]
commented
It is kind of easy.
You click a quick search like "Sender" then you start writing text. Outlook 2016/365 does a full phrase search by default but if you push a delete button after the text it will revert to partial search.
I would prefer to have this behaviour customizable as well though.
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Mike Thorsen
commented
Too complicated - Outlook should have a defaul partial word search in the address field where user doesn't have to enter any special search terms. No wonder everyone thinks Outlook is a dinosaur - both Google and Thunderbird seem to do this easily!
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Jacob F
commented
Same here. I created a similar suggestion described as follows:
Bring back the default search punctuation or allow it to be changed from quotation marks to parentheses. The parentheses allowed me to search for partial results within the sender's email address. For example searching for 'From:(gma)' woudl return the result for user.windows@gmail.com however 'From:"gma"' would return zero results. Furthermore searching for 'From:(win)' would return the result from user.windows@gmail.com however 'From:"win"' would return zero results.
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Marcus
commented
Just upgraded to 365, and this is the one change that is causing me the most consternation. Please make the default "from:(Sender Name)" so that I can search via a partial name instead of having to type the whole name.
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Kyle
commented
Agreed with the above. The default should be from:(Sender Name) not from:"Sender Name".
