Outlook Low Vision: Email Search

Hi I'm Vikki Vaughan and today we'll explore how to search for an email in Microsoft Outlook. This workshop is intended for users for low vision. If you use a screen reading program, be sure to check out our screen reading version of this workshop.

We can all relate to feelings of frustration when we misplace something can't we? Well the same goes for that email message with details about an upcoming birthday party or important information from a colleague. We get busy, the messages pile up, and we can't put our hands on that one special email we need now.

Thankfully Outlook provides us with a quick solution when trying to locate a specific email. We can search by the sender's name, a word in the subject line, even a word or phrase in the message or in an attachment. Why don't we jump right into our inbox to begin our search.

Let's say we're searching for an email from a new friend. We know her name but can't quite recall how to spell her last name. Outlook lends us a hand by searching for first, last, or even partial names. At the top of our window we find a search box. This is where we enter our keyword or search query and as I mentioned we can use my friend's name or any word I remember from her email.

Let's type in her first name, Kitty, and press the enter key. As we can see any email message that contains her name appears in the results list. The results also show emails with attachments that contain our keyword. I think Outlook's ability to search that deep is pretty impressive.

Outlook also gives us the option to search by various elements. To the right of the search edit field we select the drop down list to open a new search window. With this first element we see various folders we can search through. They include current folder, subfolders, and all Outlook items. The default search folder is current mailbox. We can also narrow our search to other elements such as attachments, date received, and subject. Now that we've located the desired email we simply select it to respond.

Today we explored searching for email in Microsoft Outlook. I am Vikki Vaughan and I thank you for joining me. This is one in a series of workshops called Microsoft Outlook.