Outlook Intermediate Lesson 2: Search Operators and Search Folders

Outlook Intermediate Lesson 2: Search Operators and Search Folders 1

📎 This article includes 1 downloadable practice file ↓

⏱ 1 min read

📘 Outlook Intermediate Course · Lesson 2 of 8

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Type Finds
from:ravi hasattachments:yes Mail from Ravi with attachments
subject:"purchase order" received:this month POs this month
attachment:invoice Attachment name (and often content) mentions invoice
messagesize:>5MB Big mails, to free mailbox space
from:ravi NOT subject:newsletter Exclude with NOT (capitals)

Change the scope drop-down to All Mailboxes when it isn’t in the current folder.

Search Folders

Classic Outlook: right-click Search Folders > New Search Folder > e.g. “Mail flagged for follow up”, “Unread mail”, or Create a custom Search Folder with criteria. It’s a saved search: mail stays where it is, the folder just shows matches, always up to date.

💡 A Search Folder “Unread mail from my manager in the last 7 days” is a great first thing to check each morning.

The new Outlook and Outlook on the web don’t have Search Folders yet; use Favourites with a saved filter or categories instead.

Practice

Try every line of the cheat sheet on your own mailbox, then create two Search Folders.

📎 Practice files for this article

Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.

Keep reading

OutlookOutlook Intermediate Lesson 3: Views and Conditional FormattingOutlookOutlook Lesson 2: Rules That Sort Mail for YouOutlookOutlook Lesson 7: Archiving and Mailbox Size
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