If you’re a Microsoft Outlook 2007 user, you know the drill: to search for something in your mailbox, you use the “search” button at the top of your screen. But what if you want to search for something specific, rather than just all of your messages? That’s where the “Instant Search” shortcut keys come in. To use these keys, simply press one of the following key combinations: Ctrl+F (for “find”) Ctrl+G (for “group by”) Ctrl+H (for “headings”)
Focus the Search Panel
If you want to focus in the search panel to search the current folder, you can just use the shortcut key Ctrl+E to focus in the search box, and then start typing:
If you are a fan of a clean inbox, you probably end up clicking on the link for All Mail Items quite often…
Focus the Search Panel for All Items
Instead of focusing the search panel just for the current folder, use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+A to switch to the All Mail Items search view.
Note: If your search in the current folder doesn’t return anything, you can just use this shortcut instead of clicking the “All Mail Items” link… you don’t have to search all items first. Very useful.
Return to the Folder
After you’ve done your search, you can return to the folder you were viewing by using the Esc key.
Note: If you open the All Items search panel first, the Esc key won’t return you to the Inbox, but if you focus the current folder (Ctrl+E), perform a search, and then use Ctrl+Alt+A to search all folders, then the Esc key returns you to the previous folder.
Show the Search Query Builder
The little arrow to the right of the search box expands to help you perform a search without having to remember all the search operators. To show or hide this panel, you can use the shortcut key Ctrl+Alt+W
This should work in any view that shows the search box.
Use Advanced Find
If you need more search options at your fingertips, you can use the Ctrl+Shift+F shortcut key to pull up the Advanced Find dialog, where you can search by pretty much any field you want.
Searching Inside a Message (or other items)
If you have a really long email that you need to search through, you might have tried the Ctrl+F shortcut key that works in most applications… and you would suddenly see the forward message screen and be confused.
Instead of that, use the F4 key to open the search/replace dialog.
You can search backwards with Shift+F4 as well.
Open up Desktop Search from Outlook
If you like the Windows Vista built-in search dialog, you can pull that up instead from within Outlook using the Ctrl+Alt+K shortcut key combination.
This will let you search through everything that has been indexed on your drive, including email.
