Narrow your Calendar search results

You may have thousands of old meetings and appointments stored in your Calendar.

But there is no point in saving them if we can't find one when you need it.

The Instant Search box can help you narrow your search.

But if you need more help, click the Search box and you can use the SEARCH TOOLS on the ribbon.

First, you can change your scope.

By default, Outlook limits the scope of a search to the Calendar you selected in the folder list.

To search a different calendar, select it in the folder list, and type your criteria.

But if you want to broaden your search to more than one folder, select a different scope, up here.

Current Folder is selected by default. But you can expand the search to your subfolders, or all your Calendar Items, or click All Outlook Items to expand to your mail, contacts, and tasks.

Once you decide your scope, you can start refining your search criteria.

Here, you specify where in an item you want to search and what you want to search for.

If we just type "Lesley" in the Search box, we see all the items containing Lesley.

It could be in the Subject or the Message body, any place. But let's see what happens when we delete that.

Then, click Organizer and type "Lesley". Now we see only items in which Lesley is the organizer.

Notice that when we selected Organizer, Outlook added script in the Search box.

In Outlook, it is this script that determines how search will work. The Refine options merely add the script.

So if you want you can change some criteria by typing it directly in the box.

For example, we could type OR Patti to show all the items in which Patti or Lesley is the organizer.

And we can add more script to refine the criteria even further.

For example, we could search for all meetings that have not been responded to, or all items that have attachments.

Better yet, click More and we can search for all attachments that contain certain words.

It points to one meeting - organized by Lesley with an attachment that contains the word 'frequency'.

Let's close that search and try some more options. Click Recent Searches if you want to run a search again.

Search Tools contains options you probably won't use that often, except for one - Advanced Find.

With this tool, you have a different way to enter search criteria.

For example, you can search by organizer, by typing the names in this box. Or click Organized By to browse for names.

Click Find Now to start the search and the results appear at the bottom.

Click the Advanced tab, if you want to confine your search to specific fields in items.

See the Course Summary at the end for more information about using the Advanced tab.

So, when you need to find a particular appointment or meeting, start by typing search words in the Instant Search box.

But if you don't find what you are looking for, try the options on the SEARCH tab.

And finally, you have the Advanced tab in Advanced Find. For more information, check out the links in the Course Summary.