Outlook 2016 - Advanced Find functionality has disappeared

This feature has been removed as it was considered a "legacy" feature.

See: Upcoming changes for Recent Searches, Advanced Find, and Expanded Find

Almost all Advanced Find queries can also be achieved via the normal Search field (but not always as efficient).

Which search query do you want to perform in Advanced Find?

I am very disappointed, because Advanced Find was one of the best features that distinguished Outlook from other mail clients. 

There are multiple features that I am missing in the current search. First of all with Advanced Find I could select multiple folders in which I want to search, then results were nicely presented in a separate window and I immediately saw in which folder individual emails are stored. I could specify multiple search criteria and fine tune my search results to very low details, and much more.

Is there an option to reactivate Advanced Find functionality? If not then I am going to consider a downgrade or a change. In every email client you can write emails, reply or forward them, but in my opinion effective search is the core functionality. Therefore I do not understand why Microsoft took it out.  

Thanks,

Peter

Hi,

Could you please explain what legacy feature in this context means? Does it mean that Advanced Find will be available only in some versions of Outlook, or is it deprecated in all versions?

Thanks,

Peter

Hi Peter,  
 
Just like Roady [MVP] mentioned in his post, Advanced Find in Outlook was already considered a legacy feature. However, you still may use other types of search criteria for better searches in Outlook. Click on this link to learn more about other searches example.

Let us know if you have other queries that we can assist you with.

But all that requires us to type in the field names, logical relations and so on. Where is the GUI interface for the new functionality?

Once an option is already a part of what we called legacy feature it means that it's already an old system or method or something like a previously supported application. Microsoft is aiming to improve our Outlook experience by creating other features that are more reliable and stable. Advanced Find is one of the features that shows little usage in Outlook, so they've already removed the said feature. The said changes were implemented starting the week of July 14th, 2017.

Feel free to post back if you have other concerns that we can help you with.

Reliable and Stable don't trump functional. Taking away the detailed functionality means we can no longer search as precisely as we could before. Now it takes a lot longer to achieve the same result. There may not be a lot of people using it, but those that do use it need it or a replacement that is at least as versatile and powerful.

Correct.

Therefore I have just downgraded to the latest release that has "Advanced Find" functionality (version 16.0.8229.2086) and disabled automatic updates.

Here are the steps to downgrade:

- open cmd as Admin 

- execute in cmd : cd %programfiles%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun

- execute in cmd : officec2rclient.exe /update user updatetoversion=16.0.8229.2086

I was using Advanced Find just a few hours ago to manually archive email that was received prior to a particular date, since the auto-archive function was overlooking many messages due to its insistence on looking at the modified date instead of the received date.  I went into the other room for a few hours and watched a horror movie about an insane asylum, and when I came back I thought I was losing my own mind, because "Advanced Find" had disappeared.  It's as if Outlook was trying to gaslight me by choosing that moment to update. :-)

In any case, I fortunately remembered that you can get just about the same functionality, including pretty much the same criteria box that Advanced Find used, by creating a custom search under "Search Folders".  I hope they don't decide to take that away too, at least until they bring the "new and improved" search features up to par.

Also, I wonder if the fact that "Advanced Find" was "little used" has anything to do with the fact that they practically hid it ever since they added the quick search feature.  I'm pretty sure it used to be available on the right-click menu for folders in some version long ago.  Now you have to click in the quick search box to turn on the otherwise-invisible "Search" ribbon, and even then it's buried under the "Search Tools" dropdown, instead of having a place directly on the ribbon -- which, by the way, has plenty of additional room.

I really think Microsoft also needs to take into consideration that some of the most powerful features in any program are often little used, because they tend to be used by more advanced users, and particularly in special cases where nothing else will do.  It's usually OK to replace a powerful feature with something more streamlined that is capable of being equally powerful, but it's not OK to replace it with something that's more streamlined but less powerful.