I use Outlook on my MacBook for work, and when I am trying to search for files in Finder, the search indexes the many thousands of e-mails I have in my inbox and shows them in the search results.
Can I turn this off? I tried going into system preferences and unchecking "Mail & Messages" under the Spotlight options, but I see no change when searching in Finder.
It's very frustrating.
Thanks!
MacBook Pro Retina
Thank you - Command+Shift+U opens my Utilities folder though.
Oh! Duh!
Command+Shift+H
It is a pain. I have no idea why Microsoft took away the option for their email client to search its own database. If it weren't for that, I'd be able to disable Spotlight entirely.
That's because Mail refers to Apple's Mail app, not email in general.
Back to the Spotlight panel, click on the Privacy tab. Click the + button. Navigate to:
/Users/your-user-account/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook
Click the Choose button to add that location to the list.
To permanently show the user account's Library folder:
Your Library folder will now list in all dialogue search boxes.
Adding Outlook to the list of "Privacy" folders seems to have worked.
Thank you, I appreciate your help. I knew there was a way to do it but when I searched for solutions I kept getting results about Outlook Search not working, which is definitely not my issue - however frustrating searching in outlook is.
You're welcome. 🙂
Be aware though you will now have no way of searching Outlook's data. Entourage was the last mail client of Office that could search its own database. Everything else forward requires Spotlight to find anything.
Ohhhh. Ok.
Well that's not going to work.
I rely heavily on the search function. Because I have absolutely no organization system. I'm one of those people who has like 7000 files on my desktop, and every so often I just copy them all to a "Desktop Sept 2020" folder and plop it in "Documents", and then search for the files I need. I do the same thing with my e-mail. I just have a very robust naming system in place that works for me - I always know what I have to search for to find my files, and I do the same thing with my e-mails, clear concise subject lines so I can find what I'm looking for. "September 2020 Advertising Budget Spreadsheet for South Florida Market Updated Version"
I love the Apple ecosystem but this is pretty frustrating. I might just have to switch to webmail and get rid of Outlook.
That's what i figured - when I navigate to /Users/your-user-account/ the "Library" subfolder is hidden.
How to stop Outlook e-mails from showing up in Finder search results.
