Windows Vista's built-in indexer sometimes freezes while attempting to index Microsoft Outlook 2007 content. When it gets stuck, the status messages in Outlook's Tools -> Instant Search -> Indexing Options menu will claim that there are still items remaining to be indexed across all open mailboxes.
Fortunately, there is a workaround that will unblock this Outlook 2007 indexing logjam:
- Close Microsoft Outlook.
- Open the Indexing Options window for Vista -- you can get to this quickly from the Start menu by typing index in the Start Search panel.
- Click Modify -> Show All Locations to view all the index search locations. Make a note of everything that's currently flagged for indexing -- you'll need to re-add these items later.
- Uncheck everything from this list, including Outlook. To quickly go to the locations that you need to uncheck, just double-click any of the entries in the "Summary of selected locations" window.
- Click Close, and then click Advanced to open Advanced Options.
- Select Rebuild to completely rebuild the index. Yyou shouldhave "0 items indexed" showing in the main Indexing Options window when you click OK. (The idea is to rebuild the index so that there's nothing in it and nothing being added to it.)
- Click Modify -> Advanced and re-add the locations that existed before. Note that "Microsoft Office Outlook" may attempt to automatically re-add itself, and that's OK.
- Click OK to complete the re-indexing process.
Keep in mind that the re-indexing process may take some time depending on what you've chosen to include or exclude, and will run faster when the workstation is locked or when the user is not actually doing anything.
About the author: Serdar Yegulalp is editor of Windows Insight, a newsletter devoted to hints, tips, tricks, news and goodies for all flavors of Windows users.
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Can this be done once so that it covers any user who logs into the Windows Vista machine -- or will these steps need to be done for every user who logs into the Vista machine? (Windows XP does a pretty good job of isolating certain things on a per user basis.)
—Lance P.
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When I tried this on my own Vista computer, I was logged in under an administrator account, which set indexing options for all users (admin and regular). So I would assume that if you reset it once while logged in as admin, it's reset for everyone.
—Serdar Yegulalp, tip author
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Before reading your post, I tried every other fix and nothing worked. I thought this was going to be another one of those "me only" Windows bugs that would never get fixed, but your advice worked perfectly. Now I'm searching through Microsoft Outlook like a champ. Thank you!
—Joe G.
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I just wanted to pass along a "thanks" for this workaround.
I had this exact indexing issue when installing Microsoft Office 2007. Then it happened again after I reinstalled an older version of an outlook.pst file (after incurring a problem with duplicates in the Microsoft Outlook calendar).
I performed a Google search using "search indexing Outlook 2007 problem" and your tip was the second hit. Thanks again!
—Dave H.
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I have the same indexing problem with Microsoft Outlook 2007 on Windows XP. Do you have a fix for Windows XP?
—Leslie
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I haven't tried this on Windows XP, but I suspect it's possible to apply a variation of the same technique using the Windows XP implementation of indexed search.
—Serdar Yegulalp, tip author
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