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ISSUE

Outlook search may return no search results for POP, IMAP, or Exchange accounts and you see the following errors:

“Search performance will be impacted because of a problem with how Outlook search is configured.”

“No results”

WORKAROUND

First of all, you need to know if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Outlook installed. To check this, open Outlook, and click File > Office Account > About Outlook.

Important: Before making any changes with registry it’s highly recommended to take backup following article “How to back-up & restore registry”

If you have 32-bit Office, follow below for troubleshooting steps-

  1. In Windows, right-click Start, and then select Run. In the Open: box type regedit, and then click OK. This will open the registry editor.
  2. Verify that these registry keys exist:
    • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
  3. Delete these registry keys:
    • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
  4. Close Outlook.
  5. Restart Windows.
  6. Open Outlook and wait for indexing to complete. This may take a few hours.

If you have 64-bit Office, follow below for troubleshooting steps-

  1. In Windows, right-click Start, and then select Run. In the Open: box type regedit, and then click OK. This will open the registry editor.
  2. Verify that these registry keys exist:
    • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
  3. Delete these registry keys:
    • HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{F8E61EDD-EA25-484e-AC8A-7447F2AAE2A9}
  4. Close Outlook.
  5. Restart Windows.
  6. Open Outlook and wait for indexing to complete. This may take a few hours.

TEMPORARY WORKAROUND

If deleting the registry keys doesn’t fix the issue, you can still work around the issue by disabling Windows Desktop Search which will cause Outlook to use it's built in search. The built-in search will display the following message that it is not using the Windows Search service:

“Search performance will be impacted because a group policy has turned off the Windows Search service.”

To disable Windows Desktop Search Service for Outlook, do the following:

  1. In Windows, right-click Start, and then select Run. In the Open: box type regedit, and then click OK. This will open the registry editor.
  2. Find this subkey in the registry and then click it:
    • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows
  3. Click Edit > New > Key, and name the new key Windows Search.
  4. Select the new Windows Search key.
  5. Click Edit > New > DWORD Value.
  6. Type PreventIndexingOutlook for the name of the DWORD, and then press Enter.
  7. Right-click PreventIndexingOutlook, and then click Modify.
  8. In the Value data box, type 1 to enable the registry entry, and then click OK.
  9. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart Outlook.

Note: Following above steps will disable Windows Desktop Search Service, hence in order to re-enable the Windows Desktop Search Service, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search, and set the PreventIndexingOutlook registry key value to 0 (zero), and then click OK

Keywords: No search results