Spotlight index status?

So this seems to be one of those numerous things in the MacOS that (1) don't work in logical ways, (2) regularly get broken in the MacOS, secretly and in the background, and (3) must be discovered by the user based solely on blog posts and other unofficial sources, then (4) manually fixed by the user, and then (5) the fix becomes obsolete after the OS changes and changes again

So

I need MS Outlook search to work, i.e. not just produce results, but also produce results that are correct;

Apparently this requires regularly deleting the Spotlight index for some inscrutably named, practically hidden application directory, thus forcing Spotlight to manually reindex;

And

I need to know either how long this process will take, or what the current status of the process is;

Previously, per user-supplied fixes, this could apparently be accomplished by engaging in a junk Spotlight search, and this would cause the indexing status to be displayed;

But that doesn't seem to work anymore;

So...?