outlook search

If Outlook search is mission critical, you can convert back to Big Sur providing you have a viable backup of your data. It would require considerable work as you would need to verify your backups, download Big Sur, burn a USB thumb drive with the Big Sur installer and then completely erase the internal disk and re-install Big Sur, update it. Then restore your data from backup and re-install all your software.

How to download an older version of macOS

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683

How to create a bootable installer for macOS

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372

Or you can wait for Microsoft / Apple to fix the problem with Outlook Search on macOS Monterey 12.1. Now that the holiday season is coming to a close, there should be some updates coming soon. Be sure you file a bug report with Apple and Microsoft.

Apple Feedback Assistant

https://feedbackassistant.apple.com

Microsoft Outlook

Help menu -> Give Feedback to Microsoft

The normal fix is to rebuild the Spotlight database.

1. Open the System Preferences and click on Spotlight.
2. Click the Privacy tab.
3. Drag and drop the startup drive's icon into the panel. You'll get a warning. Click OK.
4. Highlight the drive you just added and click the minus button to remove it.

Spotlight will begin to reindex the drive. How long that takes depends on how much data is on your drive, and the drive's read/write speed.

You should see search results begin appearing as it works. When Spotlight is done, search be back to normal in Outlook.

Try the New Outlook, according to the MacAdmins Slack #microsoft-office channel, search is currently broken on macOS 12.1 but works with the New Outlook (beta) however there are missing features. In the meantime, either Apple or Microsoft will need to fix the problem.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/the-new-outlook-for-mac-6283be54-e74d-434e-babb-b70cefc77439

That is unfortunate. If your Exchange Server administrators enabled web access you may need to use that for search until Apple or Microsoft fix the Outlook search bug. You are definitely not the only one with this problem. MacAdmins are noticing the problem in various corporate environments.

Well, that stinks. From what you've already mentioned, and James has confirmed, Outlook isn't accessing the Spotlight database. As James noted, Apple and MS have to first figure out where the problem is in order to know who needs to fix it.

Looks like I stopped using Office at just the right time.

I was pointed to this thread after wasting a day trying to get Spotlight to search properly.

Hope this gets fixed soon - I have no choice but to use Outlook for me work.

Wish I still had my old Mac. :-/