How To Search Exact Phrase in Outlook?

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Video: How to Search Exact Words in Outlook?

There are too many ways to search in Outlook, and this makes it confusing.

Most of the ways allow you to search within your email only, so when you search for something in your mail, you won’t see it in the search results.

But there is a way to search all emails, messages, contacts, calendar items, tasks, and notes. You just need to use the advanced search.

You can search for e-mail addresses or phone numbers, but did you know that you can also search for an exact phrase or specific words?

Outlook Search for Exact Phrase (Subject & Message Field)

Earlier in a few articles, you have learned to search in Find a Buried Message Instantly, Outlook with Multiple Words, specific date range, and many more.

In this short tutorial, you will learn “How Outlook Search for Exact Phrase”.

Searching for an exact phrase in Outlook until Office 2016 is quite impossible, for the preview version there are tons of settings and changes to the registry required, which sometimes crash all of your files.

You have multiple ways to find that email has a specific phase:

  • Find using the email address.
  • Using date range.
  • Advanced search.

In case you only remember the exact phrase, here are the ways to help you navigate your inbox.

  • Open Microsoft Outlook.
  • Click in the search box to bring out the “Search” ribbon.
  • Click on Advanced find under the Search Tool drop-down list.
Outlook Search For Exact Phrase
  • Next, you will get into the “Advanced Find” dialog box. Click on “Browse” to select the email address and mail folder, you can also select in subfolders by allowing the checkbox.

Note: Use Keyboard Shortcut – Ctrl + Shift + F to open Advanced Find

Outlook Search For Exact Phrase Subject & Message Field
  • After that, go to the “Message Find” dialog box.
  • Type your exact phrase under the Search for the word(s) section.
  • Select the Subject field and the message body, from the drop-down list under “In“, refer to the image below.
  • Lastly, click the “Find Now” button.
Advanced find outlook
  • The search results whose subjects or message body contain the specific phrases will be listed at the bottom.
How Outlook Search For Exact Phrase

When you open the email message you will get the exact phrase in the subject or message body. It’s a feature of advanced search in outlook which results in what you exactly want.

Search for the Exact Phrase using Advanced Search Bar

The advance search bar is available in both Outlook web as well as Outlook application:

Click on Search Bar or use Keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + K that will open the Search Tab, click on the small arrow to open the drop-down list.

The first option is Search in: – By default you have the current folder selected, and change it to all mailboxes, in case you are not sure in which folder your emails are available that match your exact phrase.

Next, enter your exact phase in the body or subject section, the selection is depending upon your memory in case you think the phrase is available in the subject or body.

You can check one by one in the subject section or Body section:

Or you can enter the phrase both in Body and Subject and hit Enter.

You won’t get the result, because as per Outlook search, you entered that exact phase which must be available in both subject and body.

You can insert OR between the search text manually.

[Subject:(yourkeyword) OR Contents:(yourkeyword)]

Click Search and the result will be displayed below.

Final Words

In closing, if you sometimes need to search exact phrases within Outlook, this tip can save a lot of time.

By inserting the syntax ‘& (phrase)’ into your search, you can get results that contain the phrase preceded by a ‘;’ or ‘& (phrase)’, respectively.

In conclusion, a step-by-step guide to searching the exact phrase in Outlook emails. To search for an exact phrase, use quotation marks.

To search for an exact phrase that contains punctuation marks, enclose the phrase in double quotation marks. To search for an exact phrase inside an email, type the phrase, then Ctrl+F on your keyboard.

Search Exact Phrase

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