No items match your search.
This message, “No items match your search”, seems to imply that items were searched, and no matches were found.
But, on Vista, it also means “None of the items in the index match your search”. There might be items that match your search, but maybe Vista hasn’t indexed them yet, or maybe Vista is indexing them now.
I made a change to the default search options – because I caught it indexing a VMWare virtual hard disk image – and the change meant Vista needed to rebuild the index.
Next, I started doing some other stuff that needed documents from my hard disk. I’d search for them, and Vista would very quickly say “No items match your search” even for things that I know exist.
The workaround is to go to the folder you think the things might be in, right-click and pick Search, click Advanced, and turn on “Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files (might be slow)”.
Of course, once again, Vista is lumping something I want – searching non-indexed files – in with stuff I don’t want – searching system files. But at least I was able to find the documents I needed this way.
But seriously – if Vista is in the process of rebuilding an index, or for *any* reason might not be searching the entire range of documents that might contain my search text, it should tell me!
“No items match your search (but the search index is being rebuilt, so some files may not have been included in the search)”.
February 27th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Outlook 2007 search (on Vista), which integrates with the same search infrastructure, is equally atrocious.
My local mail files contain numerous mail items, but the content hasn’t substantially changed for some time. Regardless, searching in (say) the Contacts folder reveals “Outlook is currently indexing your items. Search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed. 3585 items remaining across all open mailboxes.”
There’s no obvious way to provoke it to perform the indexing, even if I wish to deviote all comnputer resources to the task. Nor is the indexing ever likely to complete, judging by behaviour over the last week.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:22 am
At least 3585 seems a plausible amount of items. My system says “52,884 items remaining across all open mailboxes” and the number is increasing! I can only presume it is trying to index the mailboxes of everyone I have ever written to or received a message from. Does anyone know how to fix this? Microsoft were disinterested and Dell’s best suggestion was to leave the computer on for a week or two to sort itself out!
March 28th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Same problem. Outlook 2007 has been running with so-called fast search for a month now, and it has never gotten below some 33,000 items remaining to be indexed. I’ve installed it on other peoples’ computers who have existing .pst files and they seem to get completely indexed in relatively short time. What is it about certain computers and .pst files that defies indexing?
Another question: on computers that have a large number of un-indexed items, does search seem to be as slow as it was under Outlook 2003? I have Google Desktop installed as well and using the Outlook search for Desktop, searches are lightning fast by comparison.
April 20th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Same problem. Can;t seem to find a way to restart indexing. My unindexed numbers goes and grows but to no avail. I might have to go back to the google add-in – at least ti works correctly, even if the integration is not 100%.
May 8th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Exactly same problem with outlook 2007 and vista. It will not find any item. Just gives me the useless: “Outlook is currently indexing your items. Search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed. 3585 items remaining across all open mailboxes.” message with no help at all as to what to do about it.
I have tried adjusting the searching options via the control panel, doing several ‘rebuilds’ of the instant search but al to no vail :-(
June 22nd, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I too get this error when I try and do a search in Outlook – “search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed” Outlook currently only indexes from Feb 1(when I created this account and installed Outlook 2007) to April 2007
I had and still have 5536 items remaining across all open mailboxes even after deleting the RSS feeds from Microsoft. It didn’t seem to change the number.
Phillip how did you attempt a rebuild of the instant search? I am having trouble finding anything to help. Maybe that is a step in the right direction.
July 9th, 2007 at 10:33 am
If you change your power settings to Power Saver mode, then indexing will stop. Also, Outlook and your Hard Drive must be running, of course, to index e-mail.
So try this: (1) confirm you are in High Performance mode, (2) confirm Outlook is running, and finally (3) but make sure your computer is on. I know that sounds weird. But make sure it is not going into Sleep mode when you step away and it becomes idle, which is when the indexer will start running. It’s ok to allow your Display to turn off after a few minutes, but make sure that the Hard Drive stays on long enough for the indexer to make some progress. You set these options under the Control Panel / Power Options applet.
July 22nd, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Outloook 2007 on Vista. Tools, Instant Search, Indexing status gives “outlook is currently indexing your items. search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed”. 40595 items remaining across all mailboxes.
This number has grown in the last 2 weeks starting at around 27,000 when i got the PC from Dell.
I’v reinstalled Outlook 2007. Tool, instant search, instant search: gives no results at all.
August 6th, 2007 at 4:26 am
If Outlook’s indexing is so poor that it forces people to avoid power-saving mode – thus encouraging us to destroy the planet just because we want to search our emails – then that’s rather unsatisfactory, to say the least!
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Help! Same problem here. For some reason my issue started after a failed attempt to migrate my box to the corp domain. Ever since, I cannot search any mail, which is destroying all productivity. I even tried to create a backup pst file of my inbox and search that but it didn’t work. I rebuilt the index, but didn’t work, now I have 7216 items remaining and 20818 across all open mailboxes….and growing!
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:05 am
Indexing on Outlook 2007 SUCKS!!!!!!!
Is there no answer to this !
Gonna have to use a 3rd party app to search Outlook PST /OST files – anyone know any good freeware out there?!?!?!?!?!?
October 6th, 2007 at 6:03 am
my Outlook 2007 on Vista when i search says “search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed. Click here for more details.”
then “Outlook is currently indexing your items. Search results may be incomplete because items are still being indexed. 91260 items remaining across all open mailboxes.”
So search in Outlook is effectively disabled! Lee says “Indexing on Outlook 2007 SUCKS!!!!!!!” Indeed, at least on my system!
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:47 am
The BEST Outlook search was Bought By Microsoft and they messed it up trying to integrate it – it was called Lookout For Outlook and was available in an unsupported form until recently – but it only works with Outlook 2003 AFAIK – so once you upgrade to Office2007 you have to use this broken search that MS decided is their answer to Groggle… The functionality and speed of the original Lookout For Outlook is what people need who use email a lot. This eventually would cause the PST file to become sort of like a file system (but cached and checkpointed via archives regularly) – and the natural extension of outlook would be to include messenging and document management, making !outlook! the collaboration front-end – now architecturally this is not an interesting direction for a variety of reasons, so it clearly had to be redirected towards a server-hosted data model, browser-centric client model, and it needed to leverage more of other windows components such as search, messenger, etc. So, MS direction is to put stuff on servers (sharepoint and web-accessible email) and index the servers, allowing “improved productivity” and “knowledge management” while helping the organization to “locate and integrate what it already knows”… Welcome to the future…
November 7th, 2007 at 8:06 am
I actually took one of other computers and have it running Outlook 2003 just so I can use Lookout for Outlook. Lookout is lightning fast and covers everything inside Outlook, contacts, emails, attachments, etc. If you look for Lookout for Outlook all the normal sites redirect you to MS Desktop search which after much effort still does not lower my “waiting to be indexed” count. MS really messed things up when they bought Lookout …. seems like is a reoccuring theme! Anyway, if your a heavy Outlook user and you cache your mailbox to the server, consider firing up that second machine with Outlook 2003 until MS gets their act together….
November 27th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Uh… Ok, Outlook Search sucks. Actually, when it works, I liked it, but yes, this problem does totally suck. But get real dude, it is not “destroying the planet” to index your files and leave your computer running a little longer. In fact… neither is driving a pretentious Prius hybrid going to save the world. Humans have remarkably less power over the world than we often like to think. Sorry, the tangent is not really relevant I know, but I just get tired of hearing people complain about how we destroy the planet just because they actually consume a resource. While Outlook search might suck, it also seems reasonable to me that it should have to consume some electricity to do what it does. If you turn your computer off, it won’t do anything, duh…
December 1st, 2007 at 1:01 am
dear seekers of the solution for Outlook 2007 SEARCH on Vista. I do not normally enter any chats or forum, simply because i am too busy with what I do. However after many months of frustration just like you, trying everything from restoring computer to rebuild from new , talking to our host, server, sony, and all etc etc… i finally had the great chance of determining the solution! I went on inspired with a few try & see. So Please do the following exactely. I actually do not know which of those following tips made it work in the end, but it did… I want to warn you though that it is de-activating the need for administrator approval… But if you are the only one on your computer, it won’t matter. (you may want to try only a few steps of my solution and see if sufficient) DO : 1)in control panel/users/put your user as administor. preferably delete any other users(though may be not necessary). 2) in your user account, click: TURN USER account CONTROL on or OFF. UNTICK (meaning not activated), click restart computer. 3)click START/start search/ enter following words: services.msc . Open that panel. Right click on each of the 3 TERMINAL SERVICES , click properties & activate each of them on “AUTOMATIC”. 4) click START/start search/ enter 3 following words , but 1 at the time. You will need to repeat same operation on each. So start with : SEARCHINDEXER.EXE , then right click on it, then click RUN as administrator. Repaeat same steps for the following 2 words: SEARCHPROTOCOLHOST.EXE & SEARCHFILTERHOST.EXE . Once all the the above (4) operations have been completed: CLOSE your computer completely. RESTART it 1 minute later…. GOOD LUCK…
December 16th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Marina, you are a genius. After 3 months, search is finally working. It makes sense that Microsoft’s testing computers have the terminal services on.
January 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 am
I managed to get it working another way.
I first removed Outlook from the list of indexed locations. To do so : Control Panel – type “index” and you should find “Indexation options” – Change(or Modify, not sure because I’m using a french Windows) – Uncheck Outlook.
Next just launch Outlook, it will re-register itself to the indexation engine.
Also, for the ones who doesn’t want to use instant search, please stop complaining as it is possible to do so :
- In the Tools menu from Outlook, you’ll find an “Instant Search” subitem with “Search Options”. Just uncheck your inbox.
- Advanced search is always possible by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F
March 5th, 2008 at 11:18 am
This worked for me:
Get rid of PDFMOutlook the PDF maker
Rightclick Outlook icon, Run as administrator
Under Tools/Trust Center/Add-Ins/Manage Com Add-ins/Go
UnCheck PDFMOutlook. Click OK.
Close down and restart Outlook normally.
Since killing PDFMOutlook, Search has been working with User Access Control ON.
March 14th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Killing McAfee SpamKiller finally made Outlook 2007 stable.
April 5th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Hi,
I recently had the same problem that a lot of you were describing above. It has to do with an issue with the indexing databases (or so I’ve been able to find out).
Follow these instructions to rebuild your indexing, and it will repair it.
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/85803-index-windows-search-service.html
June 16th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
You can also make sure that the search program is in fact activated and running – eg, there should be a magnifying glass in your taskbar near the clock.
If not, go to Start -> All Programs -> Windows Desktop Search.
The magnifying glass should appear in your taskbar. If it is there then RIGHT click and go to ‘Index Now’
This should update your index file.
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Thanks for the info. In my case my hard disk space was 3/93 GB free. Sorry, I can’t recall whether or not I saw an error in the Indexing Options CPL that stated there was not enough hard drive space. Or if it was when I made a change to the indexing from within outlook.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Marina: thanks so much for being willing to step down here with the little folks who are apparently not as busy or important. Really. Please leave an address where we can send money.
Little people: try this: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA102378321033.aspx?pid=CH102499941033
July 4th, 2010 at 10:04 am
I don’t know why indexing seems such a problem for Outlook, it is much easier with lookeen to index your PC, I just clicked on everything I want to be indexed and after I don’t know how many minutes the search was ready and it is indexing very regularly, well it is indexing as often as I want it to index…