I have had a problem both on my machine and on countless machines I manage. Basically, Search in Outlook 2013 is shockingly bad and just doesn't work.
Personally, my standard email setup consists of 2 Exchange accounts and 1 SMTP/IMAP account. On Outlook 2010, I had no issues. I had a family member complain about this issue, and at that point, I thought it was just them... I then upgraded my work machine - and had the same issue. Thinking this was a one off, I upgraded my home machine and had the same issue and finally, when I came to rebuilding my laptop, I couldn't find my 2010 install and just used 2013, and, it happened again!
I have talked to friends who manage the infrastructure in 1000+ person companies who also confirmed issues. One person told me that they worked with Microsoft Professional Services who gave them a registry fix and patch which they applied and they reapply after updates or every so often when the issue resurfaces. Due to contractual arrangements, I haven't been able to see this patch nor do I know how it works or what it does.
I have done the usual - unchecked the reduce search results to improve search performance
, along with rebuilding the cache several times but I haven't got anywhere.
the only "solution" I have found is to login to OWA, where everything actually works.
For example, searching for the same search term on OWA and on Outlook 2010 show identical results, where as Outlook 2013 simply misses all results from the last few weeks:
Does anyone know what is going on?
William