Forum Discussion
Outlook Search loses focus
Using O365 current version
When clicking in the Search Box in the Title bar, cursor often loses focus and does not remain in the search bar and query is lost.
Work around/Solution ( after considerable angry words ) is to click in the search box and wait to verify it remains in the box before typing the search.
This is far from ideal as it slows the process down, opens things or deletes items that I do not want opened or deleted HELP!
18 Replies
This has become a massive irritation for me, it happens 10 or 20 times a day. PLEASE FIX
March 3rd 2025. This is still an issue.
It's amazing this has gone on so long. There's no QC in MS anymore, just "send it" mentality to break fast, but never fix it. Who cares from their perspective. Your company is going to buy O365, so you no longer have a consumer voice - just deal with it an STFU is the vibe I get from O365 and Windows these days.
Going for 2.5 years now, maybe we'll make it to 3?
- I wonder if we'll get to the 2-year mark before this is fixed. The real danger is clicking the search bar and then *thinking* you have it in focus while you start typing - then, if you're a fast-but-spastic typer like me you'll make a mistake and hit backspace. That backspace then proceeds to delete messages... because the initial click actually defaulted to the list pane. I've fallen for that several times, and have had to fish messages out of the Deleted Items folder. What a productivity killer!
- I know this is an old post, But i may have come to a "Solution". It seems that when i have the simplified ribbon view that i can click once on the search bar. The Classic Ribbon view seemed to need you to double click for it to register that you are trying to search something. I hope this works for others but if not let me know.
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?- It is September 2023 and this is still an issue. A small one admittedly, but one of those that make you want to pull your hair out because you are forced to do something twice. It happens when you have not used the search box in a while (can't say exactly how long).
I was hoping after a year this would have been resolved. Such a drain for speedy users. The worst is when you click the search bar, start typing, but actually make a typo (in your head) and hit backspace - this is bad because if the search bar lost focus, then the email list pane took focus, and the pressing of the backspace deletes the email you happen to have selected after the ineffectual typing. It's tough to describe...
- OMG.. I can't believe I typed this out already, almost do the day, one year ago.
Microsoft's silence is deafening. Just this morning again I was swearing under my breath as I realised I was typing into nothingness.
I continue to battle with the search bar focus. I'm fast with the mouse and keyboard and when you click on the search bar you expect to have focus in the search bar area, but that is not always the case. Pernille-Eskebo, when is this going to be fixed?
I am suffering from this issue a long time also.
Suffering because it happened more than one time after clicking in the search bar and starting to write and losing focus, a mail got deleted or moved accidently and therefore got unanswered.
I can only assume it has something to do with the "Action" part at the bottom and a plugin that causes a reload of the searchbar, and strangely not all users of our Domain have that issue.
- I still continue to have this issue. I was hoping this problem would be fixed in a recent update, but it's now 10-26-22 and the issue persists. Does MSFT have any update on when this can be fixed. It's quite annoying.
