For me "Show messages from other folders" is an essential feature of threading. Of course I turn this feature on, but it goes away every time I search my inbox. It's quite confusing, and leads me to think I didn't reply to messages that I did in fact reply to. I don't understand this behavior--do I just have to get accustomed to rechecking this option every time I search? Is there some rationale for this bevahior?

Hi,

Which version of Outlook are you using?

By "search my inbox", do you mean using the Instant Search feature in Outlook?

I've tested in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2013, here is what I've found:

Outlook 2010: I can reproduce this issue in Outlook 2010.

Outlook 2013: This issue cannot be reproduced.

I can't say it is by design or a limitation since I haven't found any documentation stating this. As a workaround in Outlook 2010, we can go to File > Options > Search, and then change the default search scope to "All folders".

Regards,

Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support

Thanks Steve. This is Outlook 2010, using what I guess is Instant Search (the same as 'CTRL-E'). I did go ahead and change that default, so now it seems to often return the results that I want (but not always). What I'd like is to always have the conversation thread context around all messages all the time, which seems the most intuitive to me.  Even with that default checked it seems not to behave this way all the time, but I can't recall at the moment the exact circumstances it failed. As it is it's usably good threading, certainly far better than in past versions.

I've just found the case that doesn't show conversation context: if I search (CTRL-E via Inbox) for 'from:joe@foo.com', it does not show me the emails I've sent to Joe in the conversations that appear. In the View>Conversation Setting, the 'Show messages from other folders' is unchecked. If I check it, it still doesn't show me my emails from that conversation. File>Options>Search says include results from all folders. I suppose I don't need to bother mentioning that in gmail, if I search for 'from:joe@goo.com' I get complete conversations back, which is what I'd expect.

Apologize for any inconvenience caused. However, this is the default behavior in Outlook 2010. I can't say it's a bug or by design since there is no documentaion stating this. I'll submit a feedback regarding this issue via internal way, but I can't guarantee revisions can be made to the application. 

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Regards,

Steve Fan
TechNet Community Support