Hour 15. Searching Outlook

Every folder in Outlook can hold approximately 65,000 items when you use the Outlook 97/2002 “compatible PST format. The PST has a limit of 2GB maximum file size ”more users hit this limit than hit the 65,000-item limit. If you don't require backward compatibility with older versions of Outlook, you can use the new Unicode PST format in which the sky's the limit both in terms of numbers of items per folder and PST size. Microsoft only tested up to 20GB PSTs for stability and usability, but in theory the only real limit for Unicode PSTs is the amount of free space on your hard drive because the Unicode format supports up to 3 terabytes.

Huge PSTs contain a large quantity of email, and this often means it's easier to find a needle in a haystack than it is to find an email you received last week. You learn to rely on Find and Advanced Find to find messages and other Outlook items. In this hour, you learn how to use Outlook's search tools more efficiently , including

When to use Find
The power of Advanced Find
Using views to filter a folder
The Search Folder's new view to your email

By the end of this hour, you'll know when to use each method and how to make Outlook's search tools work for you.

The personal store, or PST for short, stores all of your Outlook items in a single file. It's used to store messages for all account types except Exchange Server accounts. Archive uses it to store your archived messages. Outlook 2003 also stores rules, views, and forms in the PST.