14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has recently confirmed a new bug in Outlook on Windows 11, as the search feature appears to be broken and, as a result, recent emails may not be displayed.
The company explains that the indexing process is taking place at a lower speed or could end up being paused completely, and POP, IMAP, and offline Exchange accounts are all affected.
On the other hand, if the emails are hosted by Microsoft 365, everything should be working properly in Outlook, despite this bug.
“When searching in Outlook Desktop on Windows 11 you might not see the most recent emails in the search results. If you check Windows Indexing Options in the Control Panel, the indexing might be running slow or might be paused,” the software giant explains.
“This problem mostly affects users with POP, IMAP, and offline Exchange accounts due to the search feature primarily using the local Windows Search service to index email. Email hosted by Microsoft 365 and connected Exchange accounts use Service Search for a majority of search scopes, which is not affected by this issue.”
The firm says it’s already working on a fix, but until it becomes available, the affected users can simply disable the Windows Desktop search, which means Outlook would rely on its very own built-in search.
The process comes down to several steps, as detailed by Microsoft below:
In Windows, right-click Start, and then select Run. In the Open: box, type regedit, and then select OK. This will open Registry Editor.
- Find this subkey in the registry and then select it: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
- Select Edit > New > Key and name the new key Windows Search.
- Select the new Windows Search key.
- Select Edit > New > DWORD Value.
- Type PreventIndexingOutlook for the name of the DWORD, and then press Enter.
- Right-click PreventIndexingOutlook, and then select Modify
- In the Value data box, type 1 to enable the registry entry, and then select OK.
- Exit Registry Editor, and then restart Outlook.
- At this point, there’s no ETA as to when the fix could go live.