I previously had Outlook 2007 with BCM and I had added a couple of user-defined fields to the business contacts form. I was able in the 2007 version to search for words in those user-defined fields and get accurate results. Since changing over to Outlook 2013 with BCM, when I search business contacts for words in those user-defined fields, the search function does not seem to be searching there and I do not get appropriate results. This ability to search what I enter in the user-defined fields is the entire reason I even started using BCM to begin with. I have tried a plethora of solutions I have found on here for somewhat related questions but not quite exactly what I'm trying to solve and nothing has worked so far.

This ability to search my entries in my user-defined fields just worked in 2007 without any special settings or work on my part. I'm really not sure how to solve this problem because I have tried about 15 things now that didn't do what I wanted, including changing the scope, modifying the view, refining the search, etc. etc. I need the search function for business contacts to ALWAYS include text from the user-defined fields also. It is really inefficient to have to go in and reset something over and over again to see what you need.

Can someone please answer this for me? I just want to be able to search through my business contacts like I used to without all this hassle.

Per you post, seems that you used to search for words in those user-defined fields in Outlook 2007 with BCM and get correct results. But in Outlook 2013 with BCM, it would not return the right result while searching. Do you use the same database? Is it a local DB or shared DB which stored in another storage? And I would like to know the version of SQL express which runs background.

In addition, please create a new Outlook profile to check whether we could get the accurate result again. Thanks.

Tony Chen
TechNet Community Support

• Marked as answer by Tony Chen CHNMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Thursday, October 03, 2013 4:10 PM

Yes, I transferred the database from my old computer that was running BCM 2007, to my new one, which has BCM 2013. I'm not sure how to find the version of SQL Express it is running in the background? I have tried searching my computer and I see general 2008 SQL Server on there but I don't find an Express version?

And I also created the new Outlook profile as you suggested but I am not sure how I am supposed to use that to see if I can get an accurate result again. Please provide instructions for what you want me to do

Any solution to searching through user defined fields? We too have such issues.

best wishes