---
title: "Outlook: The best keyboard shortcuts for faster search"
url: https://lookeen.com/blog/outlook-the-best-keyboard-shortcuts-for-faster-search
lang: en
description: "The keyboard shortcuts for Outlook are almost infinite. Here, only shortcuts that speed up your Outlook search are explained."
author: "Ben Golling"
published: 2016-04-29T10:59:01+00:00
modified: 2026-11-11T05:55:17+00:00
---

# Outlook: The best keyboard shortcuts for faster search

Outlook: The Best Keyboard Shortcuts for Faster Search

Outlook offers you a wide variety of keyboard combinations that can significantly simplify your daily work with the email program. On the other hand, there are so many keyboard combinations that most users lose the desire to try them out just at the sight of the sheer number of so-called shortcuts. This article therefore only deals with the keyboard combinations that also affect search in Outlook. Master these shortcuts, and your Outlook search will become faster and more efficient. This saves not only time but also a lot of frustration.

[Bonus keyboard shortcut: "Ctrl"+"Ctrl" – Discover how Lookeen can improve your Outlook search.](https://lookeen.com/solutions/desktop-search/desktop-integration)

## The Best Keyboard Shortcuts for Outlook Search

If you are already familiar with keyboard shortcuts in Windows, you may already be using well-known shortcuts like *Ctrl+C* (Copy) or *Ctrl+V* (Paste). When searching, you probably automatically use the combination *Ctrl+F* to look for something. However, in Outlook, this combination forwards a selected email, which is certainly not what you want at that moment. You will find the best shortcuts for searching in Outlook below.

The shortcut *Ctrl+E* opens the standard search in Outlook. By using this keyboard combination, you can quickly enter a term into the search field and search for it.

![Standard Search via CTRL+E](https://lookeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Strg-E-1.jpg)

The keyboard combination *Ctrl+Shift+F* opens the perhaps familiar *Advanced Search* from Windows, which helps you refine your search query. Here, you can further narrow down your search using a variety of criteria such as *Only these items*, *Size*, *Search in field*…

![Advanced Search in Outlook](https://lookeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Strg-ShiftF.jpg)

The keyboard combination *Ctrl+Shift+P* allows you to create a so-called search folder and adjust existing search folders. These are virtual folders. They display all email items that meet certain search criteria. The search folder *Unread Messages* shows you all unread messages in a single folder. For example, you can create your own search folder for all emails from a single person or mark emails to gain faster access to them.

![Create New Search Folder via Ctrl + Shift +P](https://lookeen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Strg-Shift-P-1-1.jpg)

With this keyboard shortcut, you can quickly and easily switch between folders. This can speed up your search for a file in a specific folder.

This rather unknown keyboard combination can prove extremely useful in your daily search. If you want to use search results outside of Outlook that are not emails, i.e., integrate your Windows Search into Outlook, you need to press the keys *Ctrl+Alt+K* simultaneously. You could just use the Windows Search directly, but this way you have the search results from both in one place. Alternatively, it makes more sense for you to [use a professional search solution like Lookeen.](https://lookeen.com/solutions/outlook-search/outlook-search)

I hope I could help you speed up your Outlook search with these shortcuts. [Find more keyboard shortcuts for Outlook here](https://lookeen.com/blog/the-top-20-outlook-shortcuts).

See you soon!