Did February 2017 Office 365 update break Outlook Search?

Hi All,

Thanks for your updates and sharing.

The related team is investigating it, and we will post back when there is any news. Your patience is appreciated.

Regards,

Larry

I'd like to jump in and report that my Outlook 2016 (Local PC installation with POP3 .pst's) experienced a complete ceasing of instant search functionality upon updating Office this week to Version 1702 (Build 7870.2024) on Windows 10.

I have perhaps figured out a fix... (but please let me know if this works for you as it did for me)

First off, I tried EVERYTHING to correct this problem, short of reverting to an older build.

I tried everything in terms of the search index (unchecking Outlook, rebuilding, changing indexing location, etc) and nothing worked.  I tried starting and restarting the windows search service in services.msc.... still nothing.

I ran the PST repair tool over and over... still nothing change.. search functionality did not work and always said "No Results".

Here is what actually did work for me and brought back search functionality:

Open Outlook 2016 and click....

File -->  Info -->  Account Settings... --> Data Files (Tab)

There you will see a listing of the Outlook Data Files you are using (ie. PST or OST files)

Look at the "Location" that is being used.

You'll either notice something like:

C:\Users{Your_Username}\Documents\Outlook Files\yourpstname.pst

-- or, something like.. --

\?\C:\Users{Your_Username}\Documents\Outlook Files\yourpstname.pst

(notice the preceding '\?')

Now I don't know why it might have the '\?' prepended to the filepath -- but has something to do with the search functionality working or not.

Now with that list of Outlook data files you are looking at, click each and select the 'Settings...' button above it.

You should see the filepath location listed in the popup window here.  Don't edit it, but rather, just hit OK.

Do this for each Outlook data file.

You'll notice that simply doing this, the file location for some of your PSTs/OSTs will change to include the '\?' prepended to the filepath.

I have no idea what this means, or what this does, but immediately after doing this, my search functionality returned.

After doing this, the indexing began (as I was hoping it would) and after 5-10 minutes I had all 100,000+ emails indexed are now fully searchable in Outlook using instant search.

I really hope this works for everyone -- and really hope you will tell me if it does or does not work for you.

In the meantime, I urge Microsoft to recognize that there are many people that lost Outlook search functionality on this update, and that there is likely a bug causing this.

Thank you and hope this helps someone.

So I´m now back at version 1612 (Build 7668.2074) again (the last version where search function works).

I think, there´s no hurry, the old 1612 version works fine for me.

I rolled back only to Version 1701 (Build 7766.2060) and that fixed the search problem for me.  That fits with the problem having started after I updated from 1701 to 1702 a week ago.  I recognize, however, that this thread might include people with more than one underlying problem, but for at least some of us, 1701 worked.

@Mickey, please temporary consider rolling back your Outlook client.

I rolled back both Windows 10 64 bit computers to Version 1701 (Build 7766.2060).  Searching now works fine again.  As noted previously, it did not work with Version 1702 (Build 7870.2020).

I followed the directions at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2770432/how-to-revert-to-an-earlier-version-of-office-2013-or-office-2016-click-to-run

Please note that the directions are confusing as far as the distinction between version number and build number.  The command that rolled back Office 2016 to the version described above was 

officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.7766.2060

It appears that none of my customizations were lost.

The Microsoft people can decide whether this should be considered the answer to my original post (in any event, original posters can't designate their own responses as the answer).   But it would be great if this thread could be left open so we could be told when the problem is fixed.

To summarize my configuration and diagnostic steps that may be useful in reproducing this problem at Microsoft:

• All my email accounts are POP.
• All messages are downloaded from the server and deleted from the server.
• I use iCloud to sync addresses and calendar with iOS, but I don't store messages on their servers and don't sync messages among computers.
• Swapping-in a PST file from before this problem began didn't fix the problem with Version 1702 (Build 7870.2020) and rebuilding the search index didn't help.  So the problem seems to be in the software, not the data.
• My PST files are in a standard location and hadn't changed.