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Why is Outlook search not searching partial numbers/words?

Carolyn Bartel 25 Reputation points
2025-10-14T16:32:34.9533333+00:00

My old version of outlook (2019, I believe) would search and show results for anything containing the word/number that you entered into the search field.

My new outlook - 2024 - will not search unless you have exactly what is in the word. Example - I have some emails that have PO24681, and some that have just the 24681. I want to find all emails with this number in them. If I search just 24681 and hit enter, it will not pull up all of the emails that have that in the email. Just the ones that only have 24681 - the ones with PO will not show up unless I click on individual things. Not at all efficient, and really, a step backward from older versions.

Is there a way to fix this? We have gone into all of the settings we can find on google, but nothing has fixed this thus far.

Thank you.

Outlook | Windows | Classic Outlook for Windows | For business
Answer accepted by question author
  1. Robert Sparnaaij [MVP] 18,236 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2025-10-16T13:49:03.0833333+00:00

    Performing an Advanced Find with the "contains" condition on the Advanced tab should do the trick.

    It will be slow, since it is a non-indexed search query, but you will get the results that you seek.

    See; Partial word, string or wildcard search in Outlook
    And: Search partial string or mid-word

    2 people found this answer helpful.

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  1. Hani-Ng 5,940 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-10-15T03:03:09.4966667+00:00

    Hi Carolyn Bartel

    Thanks so much for sharing your experience with Outlook search on the Microsoft Q&A Forum.

    I completely understand how frustrating it can be when you're trying to locate emails using partial information, especially when something as simple as a number embedded in a string doesn’t return the expected results.

    Along with the solutions previously provided by Gabe Bratton, I also tested the same scenario in Outlook Web App (OWA) and Outlook 2024. When performing a search for “PO”, I noticed that emails containing “PO24681” are still returned, which may be unexpected However, when searching for just “24681,” those same emails are not returned. This suggests that the search engine treats “PO24681” as a single unit rather than indexing the numeric portion separately a behavior observed consistently across both the desktop and web versions of Outlook.

    I’ve also found that many users are experiencing this same limitation, which suggests it’s not an isolated case: Microsoft Outlook Search Feature not searching for partial words or numbers - Microsoft Q&A. For this reason, one of the most meaningful ways to help shape future improvements is to submit feedback directly. You can do this by selecting Help > Feedback in the top-right corner or go to Ideas · Community. This ensures your experience is shared with the product team and contributes to shaping future updates. I hope this information is helpful, and thank you for your understanding

    Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

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