Outlook – How to exclude attachment content when searching in Outlook 2010

microsoft-outlook-2010search

I've noticed that when I do a search in Outlook 2010, Outlook considers it a match if some of the terms I'm searching for are in a message attachment. I'd like to disable this.

When I search for terms in my email archive, I don't want to see something listed where some of the terms I'm searching for are in an attachment. I only want to see results where everything I'm searching for is in the message itself (or its headers).

How can I do that?

Best Answer

By default Outlook searches all items in the folder. You can refine your search by using advanced options on the Search tab (appears when you click in the search box).

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Clicking the More button gives you specific fields to search in.

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Even faster, if you know the name of the field you can type it directly into the search box; i.e. subject:foo content:foo. This will only search the fields you specify. FYI, content is the body of the message. There are no spaces between the field, the : and the search term. Place a single space between multiple fields to be searched (like the image below).

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Windows – exclude Outlook results from the Start Menu search in Windows 7

I think removing outlook from Windows' search index does affect searching in Outlook.

But there's a way to remove this via policies. Just write this into a .reg file and "run" it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies]
"NoSearchCommInStartMenu"=dword:00000001

Outlook – Find Related Messages in Outlook 2010 with New/Popup Window like in 2007

Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this in the same way short of writing a macro. If you were to write a macro, you cannot assign a keyboard shortcut like you can in other Office applications, the nearest you can get to is to assign the macro to the Quick Access Toolbar. As long as it is in the first 9 items, you can use Alt-number as a shortcut.

The nearest I could get without a macro was to add "Open in new Window" to the Quick Access Toolbar, then do the search in the new window. You can drag and drop from the alternative window into the original one so you can move around the folders using the original window while keeping the new window with the search.

Best Answer

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Windows – exclude Outlook results from the Start Menu search in Windows 7

Outlook – Find Related Messages in Outlook 2010 with New/Popup Window like in 2007

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