Microsoft Starts Working To Fix Outlook Search Problem

There is now a solution for users who have encountered problems with IMAP/POP accounts when searching in Outlook after switching to Windows 11. The bug has been known for a long time, but Microsoft has not yet been able to provide a hotfix.

Microsoft has now provided a solution for Outlook users who are struggling with search problems after upgrading to Windows 11. This is reported by Bleeping Computer. It concerns performance problems when a Windows 11 user called up the search for certain emails in IMAP / POP accounts in Outlook. Under certain circumstances, this led to no results being displayed and the app freezing completely.

“This problem occurs with all accounts where e-mails and other items are stored locally in PST or OST files, for example, POP and IMAP accounts,” said Microsoft in its list of current problems, affecting Outlook for PC. The bug has been known since an early preview of Windows 11.

Index deleted

“For Exchange and Microsoft 365 accounts, this issue affects offline searches for data in locally stored OST files.” According to Microsoft, Outlook for Microsoft 365, Outlook 2019, and Outlook 2016 are affected. According to Microsoft, the cause is that the Windows search index is deleted during the upgrade, which pauses the search until the index is restored. However, things do not always run smoothly when restoring.

Problem in Re-indexing

According to Microsoft, if indexing is still active and taking too long, a workaround is to disable Windows desktop search and instruct Outlook to use built-in search. This can be tried as a temporary workaround. The Office team is now explaining how this works in a new support document.

The bug was confirmed by Microsoft in September. At that time, the team announced that they would provide a solution via an update. So if you don’t want to work on the search index yourself, you should wait for the update.