In Outlook 2010 I'm using the archiving feature to keep old emails out of the Exchange server's inbox (that as a max storage quota).

 

This results in folders with the same names existing in both the inbox and in the archive PST.

 

I have configured Windows Search (running 64-bit Windows 7 Pro) so that searching for emails will search both the inbox and the archive PST.

 

So far so good: I can find emails using AQS queries such as "subject:foo from:bar" no matter whether they are stored in the inbox or have been moved to the archive PST.

 

But sometimes, I'd like to force my AQS query to look only in the archive PST (or in another, specific PST). Adding "folder:xxx" won't work given that the archive folder and the inbox folder bear the same name.

 

Is there a means to achieve this?

You can set the scope of your query on the Search tab from All Mail Items to Current Folder or All Subfolders (includes current folder as well).

That doesn't fit my bill.

Considering that I have the following hierarchy:

inbox

+----foo

+----bar

archives

+----foo

+----bar

Searching in current folder at 'inbox' would not find a message that's in 'inbox/foo' or 'archives/foo'.

Searching in current folder at 'inbox/foo' would not find a message that's in 'archives/foo'.

Searching with 'folder:foo', or in 'all folders' will find a message whether it's in 'inbox/foo' or in 'archives/foo'.

What I want is something like 'folder:archives/foo' but that's not supported.

No, in that case you'd select the root folder to search from and then you don't have to specify a folder name at all.

By using Favorites and/or Search Folders, you can reduce the amount of clicking or find the folder faster in case you have a large and complicated folder list structure.

What do you mean by "no"?

There's no way to achieve what I want?

I don't have a "complicated" folder structure, just copies of the inbox's folders in the 'Archives' node which corresponds to archive.pst.

And sometimes I mistakenly move a message to archives/foo where I intended to move it to inbox/foo, so I'd like something like:

folder:foo container:archives

to find out whether the message's been misplaced...

Get my point?

As Roady's reply, we need to select the root folder first and then search from its subfolder to ruduce the range to get the right result.



Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
________________________________________
Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
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This seems indeed to work, thoug this is not as convenient (e.g. for creating search folders, saving the criteria for later reuse...) as an hypothetical 'folder:archives/foo'...

P.S. how did you include an image in the forum post (I know, that's OT...)

I would appreciate that you mark our reply as the answer if it is helpful.

What's more, answer your further question about the forum:

1. To avoid SPAM, only verified users to post links/images
2. A verified user means user have some contribution in the forum. as far as I know, when user has 15 recognize points, the user will be verified.

So, welcome to come here again:)

Cheers,
Tony Chen
Forum Support
________________________________________
Come back and mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help.
If you have any feedback on our support, please contact tnmff@microsoft.com.

so the image is not embedded in the post, the post contains a (HTTP URL) link to the image, meaning the poster must have some means to store the image online and provide a permanent link to it?

I have marked the post as an answer, even though the proposed solution does not exactly fit my initial requirements...