Searching not returning results

[Steve A]

I'm searching email (using the quick search control from within Outlook 2007)
for a word that I know is in many emails (in Sent and Delete folders,
certainly). Outlook searches for a while and then displays "No matches found
for <the word>." It also displays a yellow line that says "Search results may
be incomplete because items are still being indexed." Clicking that text
displays a message saying there are 400 items that still need to be indexed
(I have ~4,000 emails).

I've also tried the Ctrl+Shift+F old-style searching and it doesn't find the
email either. And I’ve tried searching for the recipient’s email address
without finding results.

Is it true that if some indexing is being done, I can't do any searching? Is
there a way to speed up the searching (I've changed my laptop battery power
mode to high performance, as I've heard other options put this process far in
the background).

Thanks!

 

[Malin D]

The Deleted Items folder is actually excluded from the search. You may change
that setting if you want. The search indexing is connected to your windows
version so which version of Windows are you using? Try to search for the
message via the search field in the windows start menu and see if you find it
there instead - the search should work there as well.

The search is also a bit updated in Outlook 2010 which I guess if not
helping you right now.