In this instructional YouTube video, Randy Dean – the Email Sanity Expert – walks viewers through recent changes to Microsoft Outlook’s search functionality. He demonstrates the relocation of the search bar to the top of the window, the appearance of a suggestion dropdown with recent searches, and the expanded set of search scopes (current folder, subfolders, all Outlook items, multiple mailboxes). Dean highlights built‑in filters such as attachment presence, attachment content, message size, and category labels, and shows how to access additional options like BCC field, message size thresholds, and custom criteria via the “Add More Options” dropdown. He explains how these tools enable more precise email retrieval, which in turn supports better inbox organization. The video concludes with a brief promotion of Dean’s website, PDF tip sheets, and a call to like, subscribe, and request further resources via email.
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All right, hello everybody. I hope you're all doing well. Hey, by the way, do you like my new hat? We recently got a new boat and my sister sent me this hat for the new boat for my birthday, and she sent me a second hat that says First Mate. So I just keep waiting for my wife to steal this hat, make me wear the other. But what I wanted to do in today's YouTube video is just talk to you about some new changes I just recently noticed in the Microsoft Outlook search function. Once again, my name is Randy Dean. I am known as the Email Sanity Expert, and I've been spending the last 15+ years going around the United States, Canada, Europe showing people how to better manage and use their email tools. So let's go in and talk about this, the changes in search. Some of you may have already noticed this. I'm gonna jump out here and go into my Microsoft Outlook, and the first thing that I just want to show you is something pretty interesting. I'm gonna move this down and over just a a little bit. The search field used to be right here, and as you notice, it took me a minute to figure this out. They moved it up to the top, and, um, the location changed, but they also did a couple other things too. If you click on the search field from up top, what you'll see is that you're also going to get a list of suggestions, recent searches maybe that you've done, on some of the actions that you've done, and some of the new tools that are down here, including filtering. Which, hello Gmail users, this is sort of similar to what some of the Gmail search tools do, as well as some of these more advanced search options, which, you know, you could definitely take a look into. Um, what I also wanted to share though is this, that if you have the search and this window drops down, you can go back to the— whoops, let's do that one more time— you can go back to the previous search header just by clicking off to the side. So if that dropdown isn't what you want, you're more comfortable utilizing the old classic tools they're right here. And one of the interesting things is I always share with people this, you know, you can search in the current folder that you're actively in, you can search all subfolders, all Outlook items, all mailboxes. I have two mailboxes. This way I could search both sets of email for a related email if I'm not sure which tool came in, um, who it was from, what was in the subject line, did it have attachments, uh, did you have it marked with a category label, Who did you send it to, etc.? Was it marked important? All these kinds of things. You also have access to— I showed you some of the dropdown options for search. You also have access to some of those same tools right here under Search Tools and Recent Searches. Now, one of the other things that I wanted to show you here though related to search, I'm going to resize this just a bit because my little Zoom controller is sort of messing with my screen here. I'm going to take this and I am going to grab this and move it down a bit. There we go. And what I wanted to show you was this. They've also up here in search at the top added this little drop-down bar, uh, where you can actually click on this and do some additional types of things. You can diagnose which folders you want to look into. You can also specify right away whether it has attachments. And not only can you look for items with attachments, you can actually put in here what the attachment contains. So if you can't remember what the text of the email was or who sent it to you, but you remember stuff about the attachment that you looked at, here's a way that you can find some additional information right here, as well as some of the more basic stuff here. One of the things that's interesting about this little dropdown— remember, I did this by clicking on Search and clicking on this little, uh, option right here— you can actually come down here to Add More Options and set up exactly what things you want to be able to do some searching on. So like, let's say you know that you were BCC'd or somebody was BCC'd on a message. You could click on this and search the BCC field specifically for that person's name. Um, you know, and obviously you could set up any of these, uh, message size. Maybe you could set up one where, um, you know, it's only for messages over 1 meg in size, and then you know that it had a large attachment, you know. So you've got some ways to play around with this to set it up so that it works for you. Just be aware of what your capabilities are. See, one of the reasons I always want people to know more about their search field is because frankly and honestly, the better you understand your search in Microsoft Outlook, the more likely you are to put your stuff away, which means you can have an inbox that looks something like this. So hopefully this gives you a few tips and ways to allow you to manage and share this. Uh, let's go ahead and finish this thing up. What I'd like to do is say thank you for your time watching today's video. That's me when I'm looking more professional, not with the goofy hat. I am Randy Dean. Once again, if you'd like to learn more about me and my programs, including some of my online full-length streaming programs and webinar programs, go out and visit my website, randalldean.com. Of course, if you liked this video, please like it. Subscribe, maybe even turn on your notifications so you can know when new emails are coming in. Um, and one of the things I like to do for my YouTube followers is I actually have a whole series of little productivity PDF tip sheets. Uh, they're little 2 to 4 page documents— time management, email management, Outlook usage, Gmail usage. I'm actually making a new Gmail video right after this, um, for, uh, people that give tips and techniques and strategies on how to use these tools a little bit better, smarter, faster. And if you'd like to get access to those PDF tip sheets, just send me an email, randy@randalldean.com, put YouTube PDF in the subject line, and I will get you that information. The interesting thing is some of these PDFs actually link through to some of my other YouTube videos, so you can get access to even more of these tips in video form. Hope you had fun today. Thanks a lot, everyone. Bye-bye.
