Outlook for Mac 2019 - Search not working :-(

Copper Contributor

Hi there

New contributor - I have just upgraded Office 2016 for Mac to Office 2019 for Mac.  The Spotlight Search option in Outlook no longer works - I get no results, even when I am looking at an email, and searching for a word or phrase or sender in that email ... I have downloaded the OfficeSearchRepair.app which is supposed to reindex and fix, but still not working.  I am running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 - any help appreciated - thank you.

111 Replies

i've tried this and its worked: OutlookSearchRepair. google it and download the DMG.

 

@splasch 

@Tonygee I looked at the OutlookSearchRepair tool but the page where this is available for download states that it doesn't work Mojave OS. Have you tried this with Mojave?

@anneu620 I tried that and it unfortunately did not end up working for me. This was the step I took prior to formatting my MacBook Pro 2019 hard drive, re-installing a fresh version of 10.14.6 Mojave and then re-installing version 16.27 of Office for Mac 2019. 

 

In the interim between posting my original message and today, a small number of messages seem to have indexed, but it represents only a fraction of my Outlook database. 

@jrstone2000 

 

Working again! OK. So sometime before the 10.14.6 update I noticed that one of my users who wasn't working was partially working. A find of my e-mails within their profile would only find e-mails from the past couple of weeks but not from the past 3-4 years.

 

Today I ran the Office update (16.28). Before the update I preformed a search and only got results back to 7/31/19. I turned off indexing by Adding the Main Profile to the Privacy tab in spotlight. I verified that in fact it was off. I didn't find any messages. After running the update I turned indexing back on by removing the Main Profile folder from the privacy tab in Spotlight. Within 60 seconds I preformed a search and found messages all the way back to 2016.

 

This was not fixed by Apple in 10.14.6. I'm afraid I don't know exactly what fixed it but it is now working. I have another user to test and will see if I can nail down exactly what gets it working.

@Run2win How do you add your main profile to the privacy tab in spotlight. Are you on a Mac? Spotlight seems to offer only a search option. I don't understand any of this. I'm still on 10.14.5. Should I update? It's infuriating that Microsoft offer services that don't work and then don't offer any support. I'm seriously considering other options.

@anneu620 Tried the last tip but didn't work for my Outlook 2019 on macOS 10.14.6. Totally no results at all.

I am considering trying this.  Did you back anything up in advance?  Was anything lost?

Thanks!

@anneu620 

@mannWAI I reindexed my entire hard drive by dragging the hard drive into the Privacy tab of Spotlight within System Preferences. It would prompt you and ask if you were sure. Click Ok and then click "-" to remove the hard drive to force re-indexing. After waiting for something like half an hour, the indexing was done and I could search my emails again.

Thanks for the detailed information.  I assume that we should try these in order.  The first is: Re-Intldex the Hard Drive in Spotlight. 

Question: If I drag the profile to privacy, and then click remove the folder, will I lose all of the information in it?  I have been using Outlook for 20 years and have many emails stored on my hard drive, organized, within outlook into various folders.  The entire profile is 50Gb.  I am afraid to proceed until I hear that this will not produce an irreversible loss of data.

Thanks, Sandy

@Akshay_Mane 

@Akshay_Mane This is a LOT of work for you to expect a user to do to fix a problem that they should not be experiencing in the first place. Would be much better if Microsoft fixed the search, and implemented code to identify if there was a problem and fix it programmatically.

And "Check Whether the Outlook Profile is Stored at the Default Location." is neither helpful or specific. How are we supposed to know where the default location is, and what do we do if it is NOT in the default location?

@Intergrator , in spite of what another poster said about this being only to rebuild the spotlight index on a drive, it worked for me. Outlook 2019 is searching again. Thanks!

 

I'm also having the same issue! Why hasn't microsoft come up with a quick fix or update??!!

@nevilleh 

Thanks! This worked for me!

 

@nevilleh There is a new Microsoft Outlook update that popped up yesterday, i did the update and went through your steps and i am able to search once again! Thanks!! 

@splasch 

I have over the last year needed to reinstall my 2016 outlook account on my Macbook air multiple times and/or do repair on the indexing (more than a dozen). It is constantly losing the search function. I have OS-mojave 10.14.6, and conscientiously upgrade OS and outlook sofware whenever prompted. The problem seems to happen not just when there has been an update of OS but of outlook, and then just out of the blue. I have spent multiple hours each time to resolve this. I last reinstalled my outlook account a week ago, and already the indexing has been scrambled. It is not that no emails are found on a search, but just some of them and in no predictable way. It is more damaging than if none could be found under a name, as you end up without current versions of documents or recent correspondence. It is just unconscionable that two of the largest companies in the world with infinite resources at their disposable have failed together to fix for so long a basic incompatibility and instability with Mac OS and outlook. It cant be so very difficult to resolve this. Apple technical support asks me to contact Microsoft support, and Microsoft support always suggests that this is a problem they have not come across before. If a pharma company produced a drug with such unpredictable and negative outcomes, they would be accused of negligence. Microsoft support - please take note and invest some care and attention in resolving this problem, so that Apple users are not continually disadvantaged. Thank you

@splasch I've been having this issue since I upgraded to Mojave using Outlook 2016. I just solved it thankfully. For some reason, after installing Mojave, the Outlook spotlight importer was no longer registered. Once I re-registered, it is all working perfectly.

 

mdimport -r "/Applications/Microsoft Outlook.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Outlook Spotlight Importer.mdimporter"/

 

This is the default location for the Outlook mdimporter, adjust for your environment where necessary.

I solved it quite easy. If you click next to the search glass the menu appears, by default it is set to current map (see icons left), click on the folders (second icon). That did the trick for me. I felt quite stupid that I missed this, I'm sure I'm not the only one ;)

@aproebers I'm not sure what the problem was that you resolved in this manner, but this didn't work for me. The Search menu offers various folders, and none of them allow me to search all my emails.

[re]Moving the Outlook.sqlite file also worked for me! Many thanks to @anneu620

@Intergrator This worked.  Thanks.