I experienced a problem today where I could not search for e-mails older than 1 day in Outlook. As I have over 10,000 email messages the search function is crucial to quickly find emails. The solution seemed to be a Windows 7 Rebuild Search Index.
To rebuild the index go to Control Panel / Indexing Options…..
Windows 7 - Control Panel
You will be presented with a list of Included Index Locations, one of which is Microsoft Outlook.
Windows 7 - Indexing Options
Clicking the Advanced Options button gives you the following screen…..
Windows 7 - Advanced Options
On this screen you can select to Rebuild the Index, you will get a warning telling you that this may take some time (and indeed it does!).
If you go into Outlook during this process and try to do a search as shown below…..
Windows 7 - Outlook 2010
You will get a message that items are still being indexed, if you click on this message you will see a status report…..
Windows 7 - Index Status
Once all items have been re-indexed your searches should then be successful again.