Outlook Search loses focus

I run into this issue every day. I've developed a habit of jackhammering mouse clicks on the search box just to ensure it maintains focus. I still sometimes forget and just single click which, when subsequently typing, leads to nothing happening. Or worse, when intending to paste into the search box, this results instead in a new message window popping up which I have to dismiss but then leads to Outlook asking if I want to save the unwanted message, then go back and try again. All for a simple search that should have taken 2 seconds.

For someone who uses Outlook and the search box throughout the entire workday, this is an aggravating issue to run into, especially given it's persisted for what I can best recall is multiple years at this point and across multiple machines.

Clearly this discussion thread is not making any difference in getting Microsoft's or any Outlook dev's attention, although it is at least a bit cathartic to know I'm not the only one running into this and getting increasingly frustrated at the inaction. Anyone here run across a more official "issues" page for this problem for which I can contribute an upvote, for whatever that's worth?