Fresh install of Win7 64 and Outlook 2010 32.   PST won't allow searching- the index just hangs.  I turned off Windows Searching altogether, re-pointed and tried to rebuild the index.  Did scanpst.exe and tried to repair Office 2010.  

Seems like the problem is connected to the PST not outlook itself.   Any search shows no search results with message that index is still searching.   Left the computer on overnight- came back and still same number of items remaining to search. 

In installed Copernic to see if it would search and it can find many of my emails but not all.  

I turned off most of the Add-ins- except for Quickbooks Customer manager which i need.

Problem seems to have started after I installed built a new PC because it worked fine on the old one.   It might be related to installing Office 2010 64 Bit and then uninstalling it after I found that MAPI would not work on 64Bit.   However, I did a fresh install of Win 7 64bit and then fresh install of Office 2010 32 bit now.  So perhaps the PST was damages previously.

Any thoughts on fixing the PST besides SCANPST.EXE?

Hi,

 

 

Open Outlook click on File > Options > Search > Indexing options > Modify > Uncheck Outlook.

Click on OK then close and restart Outlook to check if search Indexing working correctly.

Sincerely,

 

Harry 

• Proposed as answer by Harry YuanModerator Thursday, February 24, 2011 9:35 AM
• Marked as answer by Harry YuanModerator Thursday, February 24, 2011 9:36 AM

Harry - I was having the same exact problems - and your solution brought back the search in Outlook 2010 - HOWEVER - it's obviously NOT indexed - but rather searches the large .pst and .ost files "on the fly" - which is exceedingly slow! The "live search" (as I type the terms) is absent.

Any other suggestions to rectify this problem that is apparently affecting many outlook users (most of whom experienced this issue after a patch or update.

 

Please advise.

Thanks,

Perry

I feel your pain on this.  I have a few large PST files, and under Outlook 2003, Windows 7 was able to index them all, and I could quickly find anything via Windows search.  With Outlook 2010, Windows doesn't find anything in my PSTs, and searching from within Outlook is painfully slow.

 

At the moment, I'm planning on downgrading to 2007 or 2003 because of this.

 

 

YAY  !!!   long term problem SOLVED  !!!

Great!!! Care to share what solved it for you?  Since this is a problem that Microsoft has failed to resolve or offer a resolutions to in the past 6 years, hearing what did it for you would be helpful (merely knowing that you solved it is not).

Great!!! Care to share what solved it for you?  Since this is a problem that Microsoft has failed to resolve or offer a resolutions to in the past 6 years, hearing what did it for you would be helpful (merely knowing that you solved it is not).

It's hard to offer assistance without sharing anything about your current Outlook configuration (like at least your version of Outlook, Windows and type of mail account) and the indexing issue that you are experiencing.

Start with the suggestion posted here: Fixing Instant Search

Well Robert, Let's walk through this together, shall we?

We are here in the Microsoft Support Forums on a thread titled "Windows Search Indexing broken in Outlook 2010"

The question posed in the thread goes like this:

"Fresh install of Win7 64 and Outlook 2010 32.   PST won't allow searching- the index just hangs.  I turned off Windows Searching altogether, re-pointed and 

...Any search shows no search results with message that index is still searching.   Left the computer on overnight- came back and still same number of items remaining to search."

There was a "solution" offered - which basically ignored the question and instructed the user to turn off indexing.  

Following this, there was a response indicating that turning off the indexing brought back the 'search' function but did not fix the indexing, it just turned it off.  A lot like answering "My car won't start" with "Sell the car" - sure, that answers something, it just doesn't solve the problem.

In the case of this problem - Indexing failing in Outlook - the problem has been there since Office 2007 on Vista and nobody has been able to resolve it. 

It has continued through Office 2010 and Windows 7 as well, and now that Office 2013 has removed any valuable featured replacing them with a set of buggy apps that really don't work in any way at all, and windows 8 is,... well,... windows 8, the question would be moot, except that anybody who functions in business has completely avoided Windows 8 and is doing as much as is possible to avoid Office 2013 (though MS has pulled all prior versions of office so the options are 'Office 2013' or an Open Source office product) so we are still left with the problem that has been there for anybody who has had the misfortune to have moved beyond XP and Office 2003 and has tries to use the "Instant Search" feature in Outlook. 

In the case of this post - it was originally posed by 'broadcast9' in February of 2011. and was never resolved (like so many similar posts referring to the same basic problem).  Flash forward to 11/27/2013, three days ago, and there is a post by 'klchilds' that indicates "YAY  !!!   long term problem SOLVED  !!!"

Unfortunately, there is no reference whatsoever as to the resolution itself, so I requested that, since this is a forum where people go to ask questions and solve problems, klchilds actually put up a statement of 'what the resolution was' rather than just boasting that one had been found (which is a lot like "neener, neener, neener" to those who don't have the solution) so that we may actually derive benefit from the forums (futile, I know).

Instead, I get the standard "I'm not willing to read the problem, but my superiority is very confident that you are an idiot who left out details or is posting in the wrong place" answer offered by those who go out in search of earning "POINTS" in the forums as though they are a game and there is some prize for a 'high score".

IT'S A LONG TERM PROBLEM WITH THE CLAIM OF A SOLUTION - MY REQUEST IS FOR THE DETAILS OF THE SOLUTION BEING CLAIMED SO THAT THOSE OF US WITH THE SAME PROBLEM MAY BENEFIT FROM THE SOLUTION.

If I didn't have clients who are still suffering from this problem, I wouldn't be here looking for a solution.  There are thousands of posts with hundreds of threads all with the same problem, and so far, no solutions - adding my personal set of specifications is not valuable to anybody! - Adding it into the middle of someone else's thread from two and a half years ago lowers that value to the point of SPAM at best, and only serves to waste people's time.

Awesome!! Thank you!!

Hello,

I have been having the problem as described in various posts above: (broadcast9, Indiana Grumpycooter, LTTB), and I was also disappointed by the fact that no evident answer came from Microsoft while the problems seens to have been existing for long.

I finally fell on a post that was linking the problem with a problematic iFilter:

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/2925203/en-us?wa=wsignin1.0

As suggested at the end of the post, I installed and run the "Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT)", which led me to suspect iFilter installed with "PDF Viewer".

I uninstalled this latter, and re-run the tool. Warning about this iFilter had disappeared.
I the rebuilt Instant Search Index and went to bed; this morning, indexing is finished, while in the recent days it remained stuck.

This situation is also described as ling to event IDs 1023 and 1024 in Event Viewer. I could trace the appearance of this event to February 6th, the exact date when I installed a new version of "PDF Viewer", which backs the link betweeen this edition of the software and my problem with Instant Search.

I can see that the problem occured to other persons well before that date; if the exact file at the origin may ba different, maybe the nature of the problem is the same and using "Office Configuration Analyzer Tool (OffCAT)" may help

Best regards

• Edited by Pere Fouras 3 hours 34 minutes ago