Boolean searching in Microsoft Outlook

Turns out it can be done!  This article from Slipstick Systems shows you how to enable the Query Builder in the Advanced Find dialog box.

I was trying to search for two partial words in the Subject of my emails in Outlook 2013.  Turns out the “Search” box in the folder view only finds matches at the start of a word.  The Advanced Search dialog box, Advanced pane, looked promising.  However, when I added multiple criteria, I think it was ORing them rather than ANDing.  Not sure, but I do know that I added two separate Subject terms and not all the results had both terms in their Subject fields.

With Query Builder, each search criterion I entered was automatically added to an AND group, and the search results were what I expected.  Now if only you didn’t have to tweak the registry to enable this incredibly useful feature…

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