Friday 12 February 2016

Quick Search - Filter - MS Outlook 2010

Filtering with Quick Search in Outlook 2010 using JAWS

3..2..1.. and I’m back in the room! It’s been quiet on my blog for a while (thank you project work) but now it’s time to get back to serious blog business in 2016. And what better way to kickstart things again than with a few tips and tricks on searching in Outlook 2010, specifically filtering using the Quick Search field in Outlook.

Way back in a post from January 2015 I covered the basic quick search option in Outlook 2007 that we all know and love. In that article I outlined the basic ability of the Quick Search feature to find emails with specific keywords either per folder or across all folders. Now that I have upgraded recently to Outlook 2010, I’m going to demonstrate some of the additional searching options – using Start Menu Live Search techniques – that you can use for more controlled mailbox searching.

Now, the options that I am going to go through here are my own particular favourites, biased very much towards the way I work in Outlook. So I encourage you to take this information and explore some different ways to search through your Outlook data - and if you find anything really useful you want to share please leave a comment. Okay, let’s go through some steps.

Search a Date Range in Sent Items

It never fails to surprise me how much effort goes into organising - or attempting to organise - incoming mail while outgoing mail simply languishes in an increasingly massive and untidy pile. The techniques here will work in spite of this, helping you find particular emails between a specific period of time for example:

  1. Move to your Sent Items folder.
  2. Use CONTROL E to move focus to the Quick Search edit field.
  3. Type in: Sent: DD/MM/YYYY .. DD/MM/YYYY. (For example: Sent: 01/01/2016 .. 10/01/2016 or Sent: 10/01/2015 .. 14/03/2015)
  4. With JAWS, an easy way to check if your filter is giving you roughly appropriate results is to read the number of items in the Status Bar for the current window. Use the JAWS keystroke of INSERT PAGE DOWN to achieve this.
  5. If your filter is not working, check your syntax. It should be: Sent colon, first date in standard format, space, dot dot, space, second date in standard format.
  6. When the filter is applied correctly, move to your list of emails using the TAB key and navigate in the usual way using the UP and DOWN ARROW KEYS.
  7. When you have finished, clear your search filter by using CONTROL E then TAB to the Close Search button. Use SPACEBAR to activate.

Filtering in Text Fields with AND, NOT and OR

Using a similar approach, it is easy to find emails that contain key words in specific columns. Try the following:

  1. Move to an email folder that contains the Subject column, such as Inbox or Sent Items.
  2. Use CONTROL E to move focus to the Quick Search edit field.
  3. Type Subject: followed by an open bracket (Subject colon open bracket) then type your first search word.
  4. After you have typed in your first word, leave a space, then decide on what you need to do next. Choose whether you:-
    • Need to search for a string of words, in which case you’ll need to use the AND function.
    • Need to search for specific words that are not necessarily related, in which case you need to use the OR function.
    • Need to search for a word which is not specifically associated with another word, in which case you need to use the NOT function.
  5. Type the appropriate function in upper case, followed by another space and then include your next search word. Repeat these steps as necessary.
  6. With the filter finally in place, navigate your list of results in the usual way.

A bit more involved this one, so here are some real world examples. Just substitute your own search words:

  • Subject:(braille AND magnification) – This will return email results that have the words braille and magnification in the subject line.
  • Subject:(braille NOT magnification) – This will return email results that have the word braille, but only those that do not contain the word magnification.
  • Subject:(braille OR magnification) – This will return email results that have either of the words braille or magnification in the subject line.
  • Subject:(braille AND magnification AND speech NOT OCR)- This will return email results that have the words braille, magnification, speech in the subject line unless the subject line also contains OCR.

NOTE: If you need to search for a text string in a specific order then you need to use double quotes. For example: Subject:"One Upon A Time" or Subject:"Training Summary and feedback".

Finding Emails Using the Size Column

The information sometimes displayed in the Size column gives us the ability to run some neat filters via quick search. This can be useful if you are looking for an email or emails that have attachments - which is a pretty common task. Using similar techniques to what we have explored already, try out the following:

  1. Move to an email folder that contains a lot of emails with attachments.
  2. Use CONTROL E to move focus to the Quick Search edit field.
  3. As before, what you type in next depends on what you need to do. Here are some examples:
    • Size:1KB .. 10KB - find emails that have a size between 1 and 10 kilobytes.
    • Size:>2MB - find emails that have a size equal to or greater than 2 megabytes.
    • Size:<500KB - find emails that have a size less than 500 kilobytes.
    • Size:1MB - find emails that are 1 megabyte in size.
  4. With the appropriate filter in place, move to your list of results with the TAB key and navigate in the usual way.
  5. When you have finished checking, use CONTROL E to move back to the Quick Search Edit Field then TAB to the clear search button and activate this with SPACEBAR.

Quick Search and Follow Up Flags

To finish the post, I'm going to walk through setting some follow up flags on emails and then using some Quick Search techniques to keep track of what I'm doing. try this:

  1. In your Inbox, move to an email you need to respond to and call up the context menu with SHIFT F10 or the right hand Windows application key on your keyboard.
  2. DOWN ARROW through the menu until you reach the Follow Up submenu.
  3. In the Follow Up submenu, choose and apply a follow up option such as Today or Tomorrow. (For the purposes of our exercise here what you choose doesn't really matter.)
  4. Now repeat the above steps for another couple of emails in the list.
  5. With a few emails now flagged, use CONTROL E to go to the Quick Search edit field and type in: Flagstatus: follow.
  6. If you are using JAWS, read your Status Line with INSERT PAGE DOWN - notice that your results list is now whittled away to just your flagged emails.
  7. Navigate to your list of emails - which is now effectively a dynamic "to do" list - and deal with them as required.
  8. When you have actioned one of the emails, remove the follow up flag status by going into the context menu again for the item and choosing either the "Clear Flag" or the "Mark Complete" option.
  9. When you have finished with your flagged emails, move to the Quick Search edit field with CONTROL E and TAB to the Close Search button and activate it with the SPACEBAR.

Okay, I hope that has whetted your appetite to experiment more in the Quick Search edit field - to really get it working for you. And if you discover some other neat tricks then please let me know about them by leaving a comment.

Have fun!