Outlook search bar moved to the title!?

My main gripe with this move was the fact that the dropdown menu with "Suggested Searches" covered the search tool buttons (from, subject, has attachments and so on). I know you can click somewhere to remove it, but sometimes it comes back, or you accidentally move the window, and even when it works that one click is one too much. 

Now I've found the most awkward workaround, but I think it helps. Here goes:

1. Right-click on the tiny arrow down button to the left of the search field. A menu should pop up saying "Customize quick access tool bar". Click on "more commands" from this menu.
2. Now you get to the Outlook options, with the option to add more stuff to the quick access tool bar.
3. Add ALL of the available commands by hitting the "Add>>" button repeatedly. It doesn't matter what they do; you can also add about 100 separators if you rather prefer that. Click OK. 
4. Now all of the new commands available in the quick access toolbar will have pushed the search field to the right, hopefully to the point where, when you search for something, the drop-down menu doesn't cover the buttons anymore.

There. I SAID it was awkward. 

You can of course go back and fine-tune this, or revert back to the original if you didn't like it (there's even a reset button for this).

SOOOOOOO SAD that users feel forced to waste valuable time like @Erik with a K did in order to simply get this 'helpful' tool out of their way!  Disgusting.

Microsoft, please just put it back the way it was.  I am really at a loss as to why the search bar, that is within my email program, even offers suggestions for stuff outside of my email program!  If I need to browse the web, I'll just use a browser for that, not Outlook! (and not MS Edge, either!)

I came up with another way, slightly less ugly. You can add a bunch of nonsense command buttons to the search ribbon itself in order to push the useful search buttons to the right, thus avoiding the dropdown hide.

1. Right-click the ribbon, choose Customize the Ribbon.
2. On the dropdown to the right where it says "Customize the Classic Ribbon", choose Tool Tabs.
3. Click on Search Tools in the list and click New Group.
4. Move the group up using the arrow buttons on the right so that it's on the Search Tools tab but before the Scope, Refine etc. 
5. Click on the New Group and add about 10 commands from the list on the left (doesn't matter which ones)
6. Click OK. Now the useful search commands should be out of the way of the dropdown menu when making a search.

So typical customer oriented MicroSoft, the issue is still there 2 years later. Why the ^*&*)^ do they not care what we users write here and solve these issues???

So total lack of respect of the user from Microsoft, almost as bad as Teams showing you absent when you are working on excel...

Thank you! This sort of works, but the buttons just type stuff for you. So unfortunately doesn't fix the basic awfullness of the new search.

My solution: Use Advanced Find.

CTRL-SHIFT-F to activate

Or add a custom group to the ribbon , and then in the Choose Command dropdown pick "All Commands" and then add "Advanced Find" to the custom group. You can move the custom group anywhere you want on the ribbon.

Or you can add the Advanced Find as a quick access shortcut if you prefer that.