Forum Discussion
Any way to move the Outlook search bar back where it belongs?
I mean, I can see why you would want to cram it up in the corner of the title bar - gotta save that precious UI real estate (for ???) but it covers the ribbon and is now farther away from the content its searching. Is searching no longer an important function? If so, somebody should tell Google.
This new location is quite annoying. Looking forward to an answer from Microsoft.
I just love when they change things that were just fine the way they were.
You're hardly the first person to complain, but sadly that's a decision coming from the top and it's very unlikely to be reversed. Just in case, go vote on UserVoice.
- Cheers for that info
- I do use a lot the search bar and it’s completely annoying that now is far from the messages you are looking for, bad change from Microsoft 😞
VictorGon James McCarthy I just noticed that the UserVoice to try and allow the old search location in the ribbon be an option was Declined by Microsoft! That is discouraging. Here's the message on the reasoning for declining (from July 2020):
While our search success data is showing that the majority of users are having more success with the new search experience, we understand that moving the search box is a big change that can be disruptive. From the product team, thank you for your patience as we continue to learn how to make Outlook changes easier going forward and continue to work on improving the search experience.
I think they need to repair their "search success data" collector tool. It's certainly broken if it's telling them what they say it is (which I'm sure it isn't, but anyway). Looks like we are stuck 😡.
I just went through this morning, in the current Current Channel build, the process of search my Inbox for items Received:Last Year, so I could move them to my annual archive. It's a horrible user experience and you have to try very hard not to have the dropdown options menu disappear on you. Without LOTS of effort, it's barely useable except for just typing in the bar and pressing enter. I'm a full time computer user, and I swear, it's not just that I have clicking accuracy issues; the dropdown for advanced search parameters is just very poorly designed, poorly performing.
James McCarthy FWIW I wrote an article a few weeks ago about this change - a few complaints, a comparison of the pros and cons, plus some snarky digs at Microsoft. See if this helps put things in context: The Outlook Search Bar Is Changing, Whether You Like It Or Not. (You Won’t Like It.)
James McCarthy I would suggest you run beta or monthly preview channel and / or using "Coming soon" toggle in Office apps to know beforehand about coming changes your users will face in the future releases. 🙂 BR, Ruslan
They did both. The Insiders version had it and the feedback was allround negative. Exactly the same complaints as you see now. Yet MS just ignored all that.
The Coming Soon feature was used too. But a lot of people (myself included) do not see that. I even never heard of it. Also a lot of people do not know what it is when they get it, think it is some kind of MS advertisement thing so it is ignored or disabled.
This reminded of how I can truly hate the way MS ignores its own customers. Too bad they are a monopoly. Really would love some real competition again.
This may be a simple answer, but I notice that changing the width of the folder pane moves the position of the search bar.
Doing this means you can type the query in the search bar and select the relevant field.
My original issue was that I couldn't see the fields because the search drop down obscured them.
