spotlight not indexing outlook 2011 files

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spotlight not indexing outlook 2011 files

I've found several articles on Outlook 2011 search not working and it pointing to issues with spotlight. I tried all the proposed fixes including the changes listed here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2473212. Nothing seems to be working though these are all geared towards Lion 10.7. Also, in spotlight on 10.8 I don't see a mail messages, I see Mail and Chats but it has a mail.app logo next to it which I'm assuming is looking at a different directory. How can remediate this problem? Not having search functionality is not acceptable. Please help.

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3), Outlook 2011

Posted on May 13, 2013 10:03 AM

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Answer 1

Rad1sh

Level 1

4 points

Nov 27, 2017 10:18 AM in response to Ryanc1ark

Thank you for such a clear, helpful post. It restored my search functionality in Outlook for Mac 2011. I've been trying for a while to find a resolution, with many suggestions, but not in such simple terms. Thank again.

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Answer 2

May 13, 2013 10:21 AM in response to Ray945

Are you talking about Outlook mail or Apple's built-in mail client?

If Outlook, the attached article is your only hope - if it doesn't work you should contact Microsoft as their Spotlight importer for Outlook has issues. If Apple's mail, then you can do the same thing for your whole hard drive (privacy pane), or open a terminal window and paste this (triple-click and paste it):

sudo mdutil -E /

Then enter your password. The spotlight index will be rebuilt on your drive; it will take a couple hours to complete and you'll have incomplete results until it does so.

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Answer 3

Dec 23, 2014 12:19 PM in response to Ray945

Hi,

Just found a solution to this problem and seems to be working.

Open System preferences.

Select Spotlight

Select Privacy

Open a separate Finder window and select 'Documents'.

Go find 'Microsoft User data'

Then find 'Office 2011 Identities'.

Drag 'Office 2011 Identities' to the other window open "Privacy" amongst the spotlight settings.

What this does is tell spotlight to NOT search in outlook, the very opposite to what you want!

However, you then need to highlight the 'Office 2011 Identities' folder and click the - sign which removes it. Your now telling it you want to INCLUDE this folder for when spotlight searches.

By removing adding and removing it, its a bit like the classic IT solution of switch it off and on again. It forces the spotlight to re index everything and therefore including outlook for when searching using spotlight.

Depending on your outlook file size, it could take hours or even days so be patient. If you run a search for something to do with outlook in 'spotlight' you should see its indexing with a blue progress bar. Its working.

Lastly, incase your wondering why this answer involves spotlight and you just wanted a fix for the outlook search and filters, its because outlook for Mac actually uses spotlight behind the scenes.

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