No items found when searching sent items outlook 2003

are you running cached mode? put the outlook client in offline mode and try searching again.

are you searching via the search bar in outlook or via the search dialog box? what criteria are you entering?

Change outlook to online mode or check OWA and you will probably find that search works.

Log into another PC and you will probably find it works. This will all point to the fact that the local search/index on that PC is corrupt. Have you tried outlook /safe to see if that works. If it does then try outlook /noextensions to rule out add-ins like google desktop search which may be installed

Not running in cached mode and windows firewall is not turned on.  When you completely close outlook and reopen and perform the search again, it works. If the local search/index is curropted, what would I need to do to repair the the corrupt database. Thx

What version of Exchange are you running?  Since you are running online mode/non cached all the searching/indexing is done on the server. You will probably find that searching in outlook is dead too, can you confirm this?

If you are running exchange 2007/2010 then open EMS and type Test-exchangesearch and hit enter. Did it fail or pass?

I meant confirm searching in OWA is dead.

Were running exchange 2003. I checked owa and its is the same. It seems to happen spartically and certain users. Correct the search is being done on the server, but it seems when the outlook is colsed and reopened and the search is performed it works.

Try sorting the sent items folder item into smaller subfolders based on year or something. You will probably find it works better because exchange is searching less items at a time.

You will probably find it is the users that have several thousand items in their sent items are the ones with the issue.

Run ExBPA on the exchange server to see if there are any recommendations to increase performance.

Thanks, I did do that, and the search still doesnt work, We downloaded and ran EXBPA(very useful tool, thanks for suggestion), however there was nothing major other settings we already had in place. Do you have any other suggestions. Thx

Did you test
Outlook /noextensions
To see if that works?

Any 9646 events on the Exchange server in the app event log?

Also did you say OWA has the same search issue? Do you have full-text indexing turned on in exchange or not? It's not turned on by default in exchange 2003

Yes that works. But even without doing that closing and reopening outlook will make the search function work again. There is no 9646 events in exchange. And full-text is not turned on, but it was never turned and we never experienced that problem. It seems to have happened after we applied ms updates on the exchange server. Any other recommendations. Much THanks for your assistance.

Thanks for the points, which add-in was causing the issue?