Quickly Locating Contact Information

You can use the new Instant Search feature available in many of the programs in the 2007 Office system to immediately find a specific contact record or to filter records based on their content. Instant Search is available in any view of an address book, and all the other Outlook modules as well. We'll touch on this feature several times throughout this book, but because this is the first time we've discussed it, we'll go into more depth in this chapter.

In this exercise, you will locate a contact record by using Instant Search.

USE the contact records you created earlier in this chapter.

BE SURE TO display the Contacts module before beginning this exercise.

1. At the top of the Contacts pane, click to position the insertion point in the Search box.

   When not in use, this box contains the words Search Contacts.

2. Type the letter j.

   Outlook filters the list to display only those contact records containing the letter j.

3. Switch to Phone List view.

   In any view other than Business Cards view, the search term is highlighted in the results in yellow.

4. In the Search box, after the letter j, type the letter o.

   Outlook filters the list to display only contact records containing jo.

   

5. Type hn.

   Outlook displays only the contact record for John Emory. The filter will remain in place even if you select another view of the address book.

6. At the right end of the Search box, click the Show Instant Search Pane Menu button, and then point to Recent Searches.

   

   You can quickly return to previous search results by clicking the search term in this box.

7. On the Instant Search pane menu, click Search Options.

   The Search Options dialog box opens.

   

   From this dialog box, you can set the default search scope and the highlight color for located search terms.

8. In the Search Options dialog box, click Cancel.

9. At the right end of the Search box, click the Clear Search button.

   Outlook displays the entire contents of your Contacts module.