Hello,<o:p></o:p>

We've come across what seems to be a problem with advanced find in Outlook in online mode, when used with Exchange 2013. 

Using the "Messages" tab of "Advanced Find", anything typed into the "Sent to...." field produces no search results.  If the field is populated by clicking "Sent to..." and selecting a name from a contact list or GAL, results are returned. 

eg. 
Sent items contains messages to "Charlie" who has the email address charlotte@contoso.com and sender is
"Dave" who has the email address david@thisdomain.com 
Entering "charlie" or charlotte@contoso.com, (or any previously acceptable partial term such as "charl" or "@contoso.com") into the "Sent to"" field produces no results.  If the user exists in a contact list and is selected from it, the search works fine.  The same is true searching the inbox, using the local user's id of "Dave" or david@thisdomain.com

We've confirmed this issue occurs at four client's sites, plus our own internal Exchange 2013 CU3 system.  Four of the sites have been transitioned from Exchange 2010, the fifth was a completely new installation.  The problem occurs with Outlook 2007, 2010 and 2013. 

This works fine in cached mode (not a solution as our clients are predominantly Citrix/RDS).  Exchange search doesn't report any issues and the index states are all "healthy", we've also tried rebuilding the indexes with no improvement.

Any ideas would be appreciated, or even if someone else can confirm they see the same thing.

Thanks.

• Edited by Ray Von Geezer Monday, March 24, 2014 9:56 AM

Hi Winnie,

Thanks for your reply, and I'm sorry I've not responded earlier.  While this problem is one that's annoying several of our clients, and while I have been doing further testing and investigation, it's had to take a back seat to other more pressing issues until now.

OWA search works fine, as does using "From:" in instant search, and the "From" query on the Advanced tab in Advanced Find.  The search services have been restarted, indexing state and copy status etc are all healthy, the indexes have been rebuilt/reseeded, and I've gone through the diagnostics again.  Nothing is logged in event viewer, and the only error that comes up when checking failed index docs for a user are for unsupported format handlers (.png etc).

The issue seems purely to be with the "Sent to..." field on the Messages tab, it's as if it gets completely ignored.  The search returns instantly with "There are no items to show in this view".  Just to make sure I wasn't losing my marbles, I've compared searches on Exchange 2007 and 2010, and on those I can enter as little as a single letter or email domain and receive the expected results.  On 2013 I get nothing whatsoever whatever I enter, unless I pick an address from a contact list.

At this point, I thought that since Office 365 is Exchange 2013 based it'd be worth testing that, and sure enough I got exactly the same issue.  I setup an Office 365/Outlook 2010 profile on a machine that is currently in an existing Exchange 2010 environment where search works correctly, searching Office 365 doesn't work on that either.

EDIT - Ignore this bit, a fresh install of Windows 7 and Office 2010 doesn't work with Office 365 either.  I am exploring another avenue.  I setup a fresh Windows 7 VM, installed Office 2010 and connected that to Office 365, search worked fine, so I'm now looking into what the difference with that VM and the servers and workstations out "in the wild" could be.  For example, the test VM isn't on a domain, it's not fully patched, it has no additional software installed etc.  Outside of Microsoft applications and operating systems and having similar configurations, I haven't isolated a common link across all of our client sites that are affected, there's no single 3rd party application or anti-virus solution in place at all of them for example. 

I'll update with any findings, but if you or anyone else has any idea in the meantime I'd be grateful for your input.

Regards.

• Edited by Ray Von Geezer Tuesday, April 08, 2014 4:43 PM

I'm an idiot!

I'd forgotten to turn cache mode off on my test VM, with cache mode turned off search no longer works. 

So that's a fresh install of Office 2010 onto a fresh install of Windows 7, both now fully patched.  Outlook is connected to an Office 365 account, and the "Sent to..." field in Advanced Find/Messages tab does not work.

I'm almost certain now that this is a bug with Exchange 2013, I can't think of anything else that would explain why we get the same issue with multiple versions of Office, across all our customer's sites and with Office 365 too.  I just wish I knew why it works for you, Winnie. 

Winnie, just to double-check, can you confirm that you are going to Advanced Find and entering free-typed text into the "Sent To..." field on the Messages tab, and that you have gone into the account and disabled cache mode (unlike me!).  Do you have the Indexing Service enable and/or Windows Search enabled (although I have tried with/without both).

Thanks.

• Edited by Ray Von Geezer Tuesday, April 08, 2014 4:43 PM

This issue is fixed in CU8, it will not be fixed in CU7.

• Proposed as answer by Manju-MSFT Wednesday, October 15, 2014 7:24 PM