Searching in Outlook

The ability to search and quickly find what you're looking for is obviously important.  We have become used to this with Google (although Google doesn't suffice for certain types of searches), but for some people, searching for files, email, etc. at work seems to be a hopeless task, and this situation is accepted.  

For Outlook 2003, the Advanced Find dialog box is extremely useful to narrow down your search.  It is available from the search bar, under Options on the far right.  Alternatively, just press Ctrl+Shift+F.  It is easier to use than using the search bar itself.

One caveat to Outlook searches is that if you are searching for text that is within a section of XML tags in the body of an email message, as may happen with technical discussions, Outlook is unable to search within those XML tags so the email you want will be missing from your results.  This is despite the fact that Outlook will search inside attachments, including ZIP files, and find text within XML tags for those attachments.  This behavior is consistent between Outlook 2003 and Outlook Web App (Client Access server version: 14.3.123.0).