Forum Discussion
The new Outlook search in the title bar is disconnected from the content it searches
I appreciate the benefits of Microsoft Search in the Office apps but I'm getting feedback form multiple people that having the search in the title bar is unhelpful because they need to use the title bar for dragging the window around. In Outlook in particular, having the search box so far away from the content that you're searching is jarring. I understand the value of consistency, but I think that the utility of putting search with the content it searches overrides being consistent at all costs. Can we have an option to move the search box back down to the content in Outlook, and perhaps not to have it in title bars at all?
222 Replies
This is an extremely unfortunate design decision, especially if they're not giving us a way to revert or choice where our search field is. The Title bar, is for me the please to display the ... wait for it ... Title of a document or email, or the closest equivalent to that. I could see some people arguing over what the Title of any particular piece of information is -- Is a Filename a title? If so, should it include a path? What about Inbox, or mailbox folder name? Perhaps the subject line of an email?
But you know what isn't a Title --- a search field input box. That is not a Title.
I agree 100%. The Outlook search in the title bar is awful. Please put it back!
I agree 100%. The Outlook search in the title bar is awful. Please put it back!
I too don't have the option 'Remove or shrink Search box in title bar' in my Outlook 365 on my notebook.
I simply don't want to use it for now.
So how to revert to the usual way?
I really find it a bad idea to implement new features without the option to disable them.- This extra search field is makes it harder to grap the window and move it; plus it's redundant. If I want to search I simply need to press <CTRL>-F. That is MUCH faster than taking my hand off the keyboard, moving the mouse, and clicking. Bottom line, this is a feature designed by someone who doesn't actually use Excel.
What are you even talking about; dragging the window interacts perfectly fine with the search bar (on multiple machines) and the microsoft search function in particular is accessed through Alt+Q on a default QWERTY binding and has been for as long as I remember.
The original design of the microsoft search bar was on the ribbon - which was also arguably not optimal if not more obscure, but it certainly doesn't make the search on the title bar an "extra search field".
Many people use this feature in a lot of areas of expertise. Dismissing it as "a feature designed by someone who doesn't actually use Excel" is not only quite disrespectful, it doesn't even consider the fact that this design change has rolled out to most Office 365 apps.
I'm pretty sure a lot of people are frustrated with the really questionably bad design choice of where the search bar has moved (and left uncollapsed), but at least express more accurate or constructive feedback.
monotykamary, thank you for pointing out the dragging ability of search bar, which I think is a nice idea, but on the other side it probably adds to invisibility of cursor inside new search bar, where you must guess cursor position, as it is not visible at all. Or it might be just a side effect of my chosen "dark grey" design of Outlook.
Regarding the position of new search on title bar is - if you ask me - one of Microsoft's poorly examined design feature, which goes on from first Office 2013 and Windows 8 designs. It was not all bad, but some design ideas were obviously "design before functionality" or just poorly analyzed design construct.
Search field, moved out of focused sight, is one of those bad ideas. There's absolutely no benefit of having to do larger mouse moves and move sight and focus away from list of messages. Actually, those are main reasons people do not like it. Brain does not like to jump around to find info, it is much more satisfied if it can just swipe around focused area and find needed info there. And title bar is definitively not that area of "easy to find info".
Additionally, I totally and simply cannot understand, why designers/developers put functions like "Reply" and "Reply All" into SEARCH suggestions ribbon? For me it is like having tire pressure gauge in post office, sorry, but sometimes sarcasm is just the right way to express how deeply you agree or not agree.
And finally, again I cannot agree more with myself when declaring this move of SEARCH box to the title bar one of forced, meaningless solutions, design before function or even "let's just change something for folks to see we are doing something" without doing any serious research on the subject. What I am talking about is the decade long SEARCH inability to search for regular mail-related expressions, like @and "." dot, which are common in e-mails, while Outlook considering those as OR separators. This disability is pulling nerves on everybody all those years, and Microsoft then changes SEARCH location, adds "Reply" button into search suggestions, but does absolutely NOTHING about improving real-world search functionality and inability to improve search with related suggestions. So searching for microsoft.com runs in my case 1 minute and returns:
- all mails containing "microsoft"
- all mails containing "com", which matches computer and incompatibility
...which is over 50.000 emails in my case. 99% of search results in my case are NOT what I want to find and does not ease on me even a bit. So if you ask me, MS did absolutely nothing to improve search results.
So MS, please, move SEARCH back to where it was for decade and more, and tie it to search related functions, ...or at least make the change optional. And fix the decade lasting search inability to adopt to real world search terms!
Covering the ribbon with the much needed refiners is a very bad thing.
Searching on multiple categories is very hard now. I use categories a lot. We need categories for proper single folder archiving. While working on it, please provide a scrollbar in the categories search list, to easy select multiple categories.
Its is not cofigurable enough.
BertHey
I had to post an answer here.
We are at the end of October and nothing changed, last week I updated office and now I have this disgusting feature...
This is a nightmare, first with inbox in the cloud even with local sync we have a much more slower search than before, now we have to struggle to find the search bar.I hate this.
I think its location should be customizable like the Quick Access toolbar and Ribbon. It shouldn't be forced into the title bar which removes or impairs the function & consistency of the title bar.
- I agree. The search option in the title bar does not make any sense to me. First time, I could not find the search option.
Adam Lein Aint gonna happen. People begged and begged MS to leave the menu bar as an option you can turn on and off, instead of have to use the ribbon; where you literally have to go to google to find out where they have a hidden a function in it that you need (I still do to do this day, and I think most people have to to find something they don't use often). And that was over a decade ago.
Fortunately third party addin Classic Menus fixes that, but as a system admin my users wanted to throw their PC's out the Window when we upgraded to Ribbon-using Office versions.
They seem to be equally pissed about this search bar's terrible location. It completley breaks the flow of work. Not intuitive - and objectively clunky.
nice workaround here:
https://www.itexperience.net/fix-for-search-ribbon-missing-in-outlook/
- If you hide the search box, how do you search?
The search function is more problematic than useful in it's current state, so it is more useful to hide it than use it. If I could show/hide it, like keyboard shortcut or something, or move it it would be more useful. I would rather permanently hide it than use it right now because it is so distracting and cumbersome. debbiejj
- I don't have the options in this illustration. There is no option to collapse the Microsoft search box by default. I agree with everyone that moving the search box to the title bar was a huge mistake. It should be right above the emails like it used to be.
