Microsoft released an update and broke search. Again.

Desktop and Outlook search is tough. It’s a space that both pays our salaries and keeps us up at night. When Microsoft released a new version (7870.2020 and 7870.2024) in June this year they broke the Outlook search function. We saw a major spike in our own traffic from desperate users looking for an Outlook search solution.

I’m happy to say that we were able to help a lot of people and made some great connections. Nothing brings people together like an emergency, right? Although I’m surprised that Microsoft released two versions that broke search, I had no doubt that they would be able to fix it. Larger legacy companies do tend to move slower than their more nimble counterparts, but they ultimately have more resources to devote to fixing things like Outlook search.

I understand the frustration people have when a software that you’ve come to depend on stops working. I also know that it happens. Even the most trustworthy car will break down at some point. The question is how fast you handle the situation. Microsoft did a decent job in my opinion and patched it on June 8, 2017 with the release of 7870.2031.

Here is how you can fix your Outlook search index if you happen to be on one of the older versions.

Of course if the Outlook search function still isn’t working, you may need to rebuild your index. Indexing can take some time, depending on the amount of data, emails and type of each that you have. Directions on how to do this is documented in the link above.