office 2016 - search results does not diplay folder location

Question

_{Tuesday, May 3, 2016 9:33 PM}

My company has recently upgraded from office 2007 to office 2016. Unfortunately that upgrade is not friendly to the windows search functionality. With office 2016 we can only search for outlook items in outlook and documents/files in windows explorer. Before we could search for all items in windows explorer (much friendlier experience).

When I search for the within outlook the results shows the date, subject, sender, etc.. but does not show the folder the email resides in. When I would search in windows explorer the results would display the outlook folder location.

1) Does anyone know a workaround to get office 2016 items to appear in the windows explorer search window?

2) Does anyone know how to display the folder location in office 2016 search results?

Thanks!

All replies (6)

_{Wednesday, May 4, 2016 2:56 AM ✅Answered | 2 votes}

Hi,

Based on my research, the feature to search for Outlook items outside of Outlook depends on your version of Outlook and Windows. Since Outlook 2013, support for searching for Outlook items outside of Outlook has been dropped entirely for any Windows version. This is still the case in Outlook 2016. For detailed information, please have a look at the following article:

http://www.msoutlook.info/question/748

Please Note: Since the web site is not hosted by Microsoft, the link may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this information.

If you want the search result to display folder location in Outlook, you can just hover over the item in the search result, then it will pop out the folder location. Like this:

Or, you can add a "In Folder" column to your Outlook folder view:

1. Click View tab > View Settings.

2. Click Columns button.

3. In the "Select available columns from" drop-down menu, select All Mail fields.

4. Scroll down the list and highlight the "In folder" field. Click Add button.

5. You can move the "In folder" column to a proper order by dragging it.

6. Click OK.

You may need to do this for all subfolders that you want to search in.

Regards,

Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support

Please mark the reply as an answer if you find it is helpful.

If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected].

_{Wednesday, May 4, 2016 2:06 PM}

Thanks Steve.

At least I can see the folder locations now. Do you know how we can give feedback to Microsoft about the search issues and dropped functionality in 2016?

_{Thursday, May 5, 2016 2:44 AM}

Thank you for the update. What search issues and dropped functionality in Outlook 2016 do you mean? If you need to submit feedback to Outlook 2016, you can click File tab > Feedback in Outlook 2016.

Regards,

Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support

Please mark the reply as an answer if you find it is helpful.

If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected].

_{Thursday, May 5, 2016 8:01 PM}

Hi Steve,

I'm referring to the  dropped functionality of being able to search emails and documents all in one location. That does not exist anymore using windows search after upgrading to 2016. Now I have to search for documents in windows search and emails in outlook.

There are 3rd party tools that do that but they cost $$ and I don't know if I could even install that tool on a corporate computer. 

Thanks. I'll give Microsoft some feedback.

_{Tuesday, August 14, 2018 8:48 AM}

It does not work with Office 2016

_{Wednesday, February 12, 2020 5:15 PM}

Hello, <o:p></o:p>

I know this post is old but I'm going to try anyway, lol. 

I used to be able to see that "in folder" hover but now I can't. Is there a setting somewhere that was changed? How do I get that hover functionality back? <o:p></o:p>

Thanks.<o:p></o:p>